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Title
Suicide, Signals, and Symbionts : evolving Cooperation in Agent-Based Systems
Creator
Vostinar, Anya E.
Date
2017
Collection
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description
Cooperation is ubiquitous in nature despite the constant pressure for organisms to cheat by receiving a benefit from cooperators, while not cooperating themselves. The continued evolution and persistence of countless forms of cooperation is a central topic in evolutionary theory. Extensive research has been done on the theoretical dynamics of cooperation through game theory and the natural examples of cooperation. However, it remains difficult to understand thoroughly the evolution of many...
Show moreCooperation is ubiquitous in nature despite the constant pressure for organisms to cheat by receiving a benefit from cooperators, while not cooperating themselves. The continued evolution and persistence of countless forms of cooperation is a central topic in evolutionary theory. Extensive research has been done on the theoretical dynamics of cooperation through game theory and the natural examples of cooperation. However, it remains difficult to understand thoroughly the evolution of many cooperative systems, due in part to the ancient origins of these systems and the long time scales required to see cooperation evolve in any natural populations. I have systematically analyzed the evolution of three broad types of cooperation: programmed cell death, quorum sensing, and mutualisms (cooperation across species). I have provided evidence that programmed cell death can originate due to kin selection. I have also created two new systems to enable the extensive exploration of factors that affect the evolution of public goods cooperation and mutualism. Using these systems, I determine the effects of environmental factors on the evolution of public goods cooperation and mutualism. By uniting the expansive theoretical work on these forms of cooperation with a fully-controlled experimental system, I contributed to our understanding of how these forms of cooperation can emerge and be maintained in industrial and medical applications that rely on bacterial cooperation.
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Title
On the Constructive Power of Ecology in Open-Ended Evolving Systems
Creator
Dolson, Emily L.
Date
2019
Collection
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description
Ecology is a powerful force for unlocking the full potential of evolution. Ecological interactions create feedback loops that promote diversification, both in natural ecosystems and in more applied evolutionary computation frameworks. However, we currently lack a strong theoretical framework that predicts how a given ecological community will evolve. Such a framework would allow us to better understand and anticipate change in evolving systems and facilitate the harnessing of ecology as a...
Show moreEcology is a powerful force for unlocking the full potential of evolution. Ecological interactions create feedback loops that promote diversification, both in natural ecosystems and in more applied evolutionary computation frameworks. However, we currently lack a strong theoretical framework that predicts how a given ecological community will evolve. Such a framework would allow us to better understand and anticipate change in evolving systems and facilitate the harnessing of ecology as a tool for guiding evolution. In this work, I develop tools to begin the development of such theory in computational systems. Using these tools, I show that different mechanisms for creating ecology (e.g. spatial structure and varied competition schemes) produce radically different community structures and evolutionary outcomes. I explore the implications of these differences in the context of evolutionary computation and biology.
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