A Case Study of the De Novo Evolution of a Complex Odometric Behavior in Digital Organisms
Figure 3
Example trajectories of the modified step-counting organism traversing ancestral paths.
The increment instruction in the counting routine was replaced with a neutral instruction (nop-X). (A) Left-turn path. The organism stops at the first turn and fails to replicate. (B) Right-turn path, with extended path end. The organism misses the second turn, wanders for a couple steps, stops, but successfully completes its replication, although with a much reduced metabolic rate from the unmodified genome.