Fig. 1

Representative Avida-ED individual and population. a The circular genome of a replicating Avidian individual. Each letter in the circular sequence represents an individual command from the set of 26 commands. Each command may randomly mutate to some other command during replication (e.g., the purple q in the incomplete offspring genome) and new sequences of commands may produce rewardable functions. b The Avida-ED virtual Petri dish shows a population of Avidians. Colors indicate properties of organisms (e.g., fitness, metabolic rate, etc.). A selected organism (here, in pink with a white square border) can be saved or put into an organism viewer to see its genome