Toward Open-Ended Fraternal Transitions in Individuality

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Artificial life
• Systems biology

Background:

• Transitions in individuality are crucial for the evolution of complex life.
• Understanding these transitions is key for developing artificial systems capable of open-ended evolution.
• Inducing and detecting such transitions in artificial systems is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce the DISHTINY (Distributed Hierarchical Transitions in Individuality) platform.
• Enable and study the emergence of hierarchical individuality in artificial organisms.
• Investigate mechanisms driving transitions in individuality.

Main Methods:

• Developed a platform with simple cell-like organisms incentivized to unite.
• Organisms coordinate spatiotemporally to maximize resource harvest and reproductive ability.
• Evolved parameters for manually designed strategies in replicate populations.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated hierarchical emergence of multiple levels of individuality.
• Observed reproductive division of labor, cooperation, resource-sharing, and apoptosis.
• Populations evolved to form both low-level and high-level multicellular individuals.

Conclusions:

• The DISHTINY platform successfully facilitates the study of evolutionary transitions in individuality.
• Artificial organisms can evolve complex cooperative behaviors and hierarchical structures.
• This work provides insights into the evolution of multicellularity and open-ended evolution.