Cornforth, David, David G. Green, and Jenny Awburn. “Weasel World: a simple artificial environment for investigating open-ended evolution.” In Asia Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems 2004 , pp. 40-49. Monash University Publishing, 2004.
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Weasel World is an artificial life environment for simulating open ended evolution. It consists of a genetic algorithm embedded in a pseudo spatial context, composed of the text of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The novelty of Weasel World is that it combines features from many evolutionary algorithms with an operation that increases genotype length, placement of individuals within a spatial context, the notion of territory, and interaction with global environmental parameters. Individuals interact with others in their territory, competing
for the right to reproduce in a modified tournament selection. Weasel World demonstrates phase changes, clustering and self-organization, as well as showing the importance of considering the interaction between local phenomena and global constraints. The evolutionary process undergoes different phases arising from independent growth, a competitive phase and a lack of nutrient.