Just a quick post to announce the publication of a review article from this past fall Symbiosis in Digital Evolution: Past, Present, and Future. The review is aimed primarily at ecologists and evolutionary biologists interested in how the technique/field of digital evolution can be used to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of symbiosis. However, a secondary audience that we kept in mind while writing are those already working in digital evolution and artificial life who are interested in the research space of symbiosis and a history of digital evolution through the lens of symbiosis. I also generally aim to make all of my papers accessible to my undergraduate students, so I hope that it will be interesting and understandable to a wide range of readers.

Highlights from the paper:

  • A history of symbiosis in digital evolution from the very beginning of the field, including some little-known digital evolution systems
  • A middle-ground and extensively considered definition of digital evolution
  • A briefer discussion of the definition of symbiosis
  • A lovely figure depicting the main components of symbiosis in a hypothetical digital evolution system.
  • An overview and synthesis of the findings regarding symbiosis found using digital evolution
  • A list of the current digital evolution software that supports symbiosis in some form and a comparison of their functionalities
  • A whole bunch of open research questions and directions about symbiosis that digital evolution is well-suited to investigate
  • A call for specific improvements and innovations in digital evolution software that will be necessary to push forward investigation into symbiotic dynamics

I hope you enjoy!