Synchronization of pulse-coupled biological oscillators
SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics
Firefly-inspired Heartbeat Synchronization in Overlay Networks
SASO '07 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems
Cooperative network construction using digital germlines
Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
On fireflies, cellular systems, and evolware
ICES'03 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Evolvable systems: from biology to hardware
Evolution of an adaptive sleep response in digital organisms
ECAL'07 Proceedings of the 9th European conference on Advances in artificial life
Directed evolution of communication and cooperation in digital organisms
ECAL'07 Proceedings of the 9th European conference on Advances in artificial life
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In this paper, we present a study in the evolution of cooperative behavior, specifically synchronization, through digital evolution and multilevel selection. In digital evolution, a population of self-replicating computer programs exists in a user-defined computational environment and is subject to instructionlevel mutations and natural selection. Multilevel selection links the survival of the individual to the survival of its group, thus encouraging cooperation. Previous approaches to designing synchronization algorithms have taken inspiration from nature: In the well-known firefly model, the only form of communication between agents is in the form of "flash" messages among neighbors. Here we demonstrate that populations of digital organisms, provided with a similar mechanism and minimal information about their environment, are capable of evolving algorithms for synchronization, and that the evolved behaviors are robust to message loss. Moreover, analysis of the dominant genome reveals that the evolved solution utilizes an adaptive frequency strategy strikingly similar to that observed in fireflies.