Simulating Food Chains

A food chain describes the hierarchy of living organisms within an ecosystem. For instance, consider a very simple abstracted food chain made up of three entities. At the bottom of the food chain is the plant. It derives its energy from the environment (rain, soil, and the sun). The next level is herbivores ”a herbivore consumes plant life to survive. Finally, at the top are carnivores. Carnivores, within this simulation, consume herbivores in order to survive. Ignoring the effect of dead herbivores and carnivores on the environment, the food chain can be illustrated as shown in Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1: Simple food chain.

By viewing Figure 7.1 as a dependency graph, it should be very clear that a delicate balance exists between the entities. What happens if the abundance of plant life diminishes through a drought or other natural or artificial event? The lack of plant life affects the sustainability of herbivores within the environment, which results in a decrease in their population. This effect cascades up through the food chain, ultimately affecting the carnivore population at the top. This balance can be modeled and studied within the domain of artificial life and synthetic ethology.