Using Secondary Inherited Characteristics During Reproductive Choice to Replicate Allopatric Speciation

Gary Parker, Jay Nash

2024

Abstract

The goal of this research is to create an environment where we can use evolutionary computation (EC) with separate chromosomes in independent agents to replicate allopatric speciation, the process in which a species diverges into two distinct, reproductively separate species based on geographic isolation. In previous work done by Parker and Edwards, an environment and genetic algorithm were developed to simulate this type of speciation. However, some aspects of the developed environment could be considered a priori knowledge. This paper details a new system where agents do not have access to what we will refer to as “primary characteristics” or characteristics that directly affect agent fitness and success. Characteristics that have no bearing on agent fitness, referred to as "secondary characteristics", are solely used by the agents to determine reproductive choice. This has a variety of benefits, most clearly that no a priori knowledge is used in the system. This can result in two species that have identical primary, fitness affecting characteristics, but are reproductively separated due to secondary, arbitrary characteristics. The reduction of knowledge available to the agents during reproduction makes the system a better match for biological systems, but was expected to cause an increase in cross species hybrids. However, it led to a higher degree of speciation than previous work on the topic. As a result, this system improves upon the previous method used to simulate the natural process of allopatric speciation via a genetic algorithm by reducing a priori knowledge and increasing efficacy.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Parker G. and Nash J. (2024). Using Secondary Inherited Characteristics During Reproductive Choice to Replicate Allopatric Speciation. In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 1: ECTA; ISBN 978-989-758-721-4, SciTePress, pages 304-312. DOI: 10.5220/0013017900003837

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ecta24,
author={Gary Parker and Jay Nash},
title={Using Secondary Inherited Characteristics During Reproductive Choice to Replicate Allopatric Speciation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 1: ECTA},
year={2024},
pages={304-312},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013017900003837},
isbn={978-989-758-721-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 1: ECTA
TI - Using Secondary Inherited Characteristics During Reproductive Choice to Replicate Allopatric Speciation
SN - 978-989-758-721-4
AU - Parker G.
AU - Nash J.
PY - 2024
SP - 304
EP - 312
DO - 10.5220/0013017900003837
PB - SciTePress