Evosphere: Evolutionary dynamics in a population of fighting virtual creatures

It is often suggested that traditional models of artificial evolution, based on explicit, human-defined fitness functions, are fundamentally more restricted and less creative than natural evolution, in which no such constraint exists. After a discussion and refinement of this statement, we suggest a classification of evolutionary systems according to their evolutionary ldquocreativityrdquo. We describe an environment, called Evosphere, in which a population of 3D creatures interact, fight with each other, and evolve freely on the surface of a ldquomicroplanetrdquo. We demonstrate the onset of natural selection and adaptive evolution within this virtual world, both by visual inspection and statistical analysis. We show that the introduction of reproductively isolated species enriches the dynamics of the system, leading to simple evolutionary feedbacks among species.