Insect Nest

Compared to the Insect simulation, the only change is in the definition of how a Creature is loosing Energy over time: when it is in a Nest it looses a lot less Energy:

The result is quite interesting: the Creatures remain mainly in the Nests as can be seen in this video (the boxes are the nests, the grey squares represent food appearing in the world, the red lines represent creatures harvesting for food):

But if Energy loss is identical inside and outside the nest:

Then we have a very different behaviour: most creatures do not stay in nests and just wander around looking for food:

Conclusion

We observe that the simple change in the model to provide protection in the nest (because Creatures consume less Energy when in the nest) leads to:

• A totally different behaviour:
  • When protected by the nest the Creatures remain in the nest till they find nearby Food, those that managed to harvest food return to a nest where they consume the food and reproduce.
  • When not protected by the nest, the creatures wander around randomly till they find some food to harvest, and then go to the first nest they find to consume the food and reproduce.
• Most interestingly the density of nests is 5 to 10 times higher when the nest gives protection, although building a nest is costly, so it is a sacrifice for the Creature doing it. Why such sacrifice involves a small percentage of the population (less than 1%) and is self-regulated in different proportion in both simulations remains a mystery to me. It is the magic of evolution...

Another interesting observation of the simulation with protective nest is seen in the evolution graph below:

If you look at the evolution of the total population, you can see 2 steps. The first step occurred when suddenly the percentage of the population Harvesting went from 12% to 45%. The second step occurred when the same percentage went back to 12% again. Each of those 2 steps correspond to an emerging behaviour which becomes predominant within the entire population within several generations. It confirms the theories stating that evolution is not gradual, but goes through major evolutionary steps.

But this is still far from simulating a eusocial colony. A eusocial colony is defined in Wikipedia as "the highest level of organization of animal sociality" and characterized by:

• Cooperative brood care,
• Overlapping adult generations, and
• Division of labor by reproductive and (partially) non-reproductive groups

Let's try some more ideas...