Biological systems demonstrate the role of spatial gradients in ecological niche factor but it can be difficult to precisely quantify this. We have incorporated a similar effect into a spatial animat agent model and have used this to measure the change in the fitness success factor when an animat that has evolved for success in one niche is transplanted to a different spatial environmental niche. We describe experiments involving up to one million animat agents of multiple predator and prey sub-species and discuss the implications for animat evolution in large scale models.
Keywords: evolution; multi-agent systems; genetic algorithms; animat agents.
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