Three Characteristics of Successful Symbiotes: Observing the Evolution of Symbiosis in Silico

In past work, we developed a computational model of the evolution of symbiotic entities (Model-S), based on Conway's Game of Life. In this article, we examine three trends that biologists have observed in the evolution of symbiotes. (1) Management: If one partner is able to control the symbiotic relation, this control can reduce conflict; thus evolutionary selection favours symbiotes that have a manager. (2) Mutualism: Although partners in symbiosis often have conflicting needs, evolutionary selection favours increasing cooperation among partners. (3) Interaction: Repeated interaction among partners in symbiosis tends to promote increasing fitness due to evolutionary selection. We have added instrumentation to Model-S that allows us to make detailed measurements, to see whether the three trends can be observed in the simulation. When we measure the fitness of a symbiote by the number of children it has, we find that fitter symbiotes have significantly more management, mutualism, and interaction than less fit symbiotes. These results confirm the trends observed in nature by biologists. Model-S allows biologists to study these evolutionary trends and other characteristics of symbiosis in ways that are not tractable with living organisms.