Studying Evolution with Digital Organisms
A virtual digital petri dish in the Avida-ED software application. Each grid represents a digital organism.Copyright 2011 Rob Pennock, Michigan State University
Students observe natural selection in action and investigate the underlying mechanism, including random mutation and differential fitness based on environmental characteristics. They do this through use of the free AVIDA-ED digital evolution software application.
Computer scientists and engineers work together to create software and hardware to model complex systems and create new technologies. The digital evolution software, Avida, was created by a group of computer scientists and software engineers interested in the experimental study of digital organisms in order to better understand how biological natural selection works and then to apply that knowledge to solving computational problems. Evolutionary computation methods can be applied to solve a wide range of engineering design problems.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain how the random mutation of genetic information during reproduction leads to variation among individuals of a population.
- Relate the variation among individuals of a population to their differential fitness and explain how the nonrandom process of natural selection acts at the population level to increase or decrease the proportions of certain variations.
- Explain the role of the environment in the process of natural selection.