In the paper Evolutionary Technology and Phenotype Plasticity: The FATINT System, George Kampis and László Gulyás have introduced the FATINT system, agent-based model that aims to simulate open evolution and thus evolutionary technology. That is environment in which agents and populations can constantly evolve, growing ever more diverse and complex.
They define three key concepts of the system:
species, groups of agents which can no longer reproduce with other groups,niches, an aspect of the environment a species can interact with, indirectly affecting its own and other species' evolution, andfat phenotypes, a genotype which supports phenotype plasticity.
Phenotype plasticity is key in their research, as it allows the genotype to express phenotypes as a function of the environment.
In this thesis we will reimplement the FATINT system on the NetLogo platform, validate the experiments Kampis and Gulyás have conducted.