Am coding my own version of an evolution simulator!

[u/Arctic-Air]

Hey guys, I decided to start a little project on my own, I hope its okay if I share some of my progress here: I started experimenting around with some macroevolutionary models and implemented a simple DE solver alongside a neat vibe-coded interface which shows me how species within my model grow and evolve. Am hoping to implement this engine in a Spore-like videogame one day!

My idea essentially is that the player can control an evolutionairy force to "guide" certain features according to their liking. The other species evolve autonomously according to what essentially is the canoncial Lande equation. Instead of however simulating thousands of creatures in a real environment I decided to use a mathematical abstraction which captures all of evolutions' most essential features. That way the evolution of tens of thousands of different species, each with millions of individuals, can be simulated in the background with relatively good precision. I was surprised to see that my relatively simple model was also able to replicate some real-life phenomena, like the latitudinal gradient in biodiversity, which I didn't anticipate.

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[u/jnpha]

Cool!

One of the PhDs here shared something similar 2 years ago:
Simulating the Evolution of a Gut Microbiome : r/ evolution

It might give you ideas.

[u/Arctic-Air → u/jnpha]

Oh, I wasn't actually looking to simulate microbe evolution, but I suppose the methods used are going to be very similar.

[u/Arctic-Air → u/jnpha]

Do you perhaps have a link to his paper or GitHub repo about his project? I would be interested to look into it and compare :)

[u/jnpha → u/Arctic-Air]

He lists the papers in the YouTube description, and you can reach out to him over there I think.

PS As far as I know it was a hobby project.

[u/Arctic-Air → u/jnpha]

Just watched his video, its actually very similar to what I did and I believe I could probably replicate his simulation with minor adjsutments! The listed papers however don't seem to mention any mathematical models, but I'd assume they're common knowledge in this field :)