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Science 2 July 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5680, pp. 84 - 86
DOI: 10.1126/science.1096307
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Reports

Adaptive Radiation from Resource Competition in Digital Organisms

Stephanie S. Chow,1* Claus O. Wilke,1,2* Charles Ofria,3 Richard E. Lenski,4 Christoph Adami1,2{dagger}

Species richness often peaks at intermediate productivity and decreases as resources become more or less abundant. The mechanisms that produce this pattern are not completely known, but several previous studies have suggested environmental heterogeneity as a cause. In experiments with evolving digital organisms and populations of fixed size, maximum species richness emerges at intermediate productivity, even in a spatially homogeneous environment, owing to frequency-dependent selection to exploit an influx of mixed resources. A diverse pool of limiting resources is sufficient to cause adaptive radiation, which is manifest by the origin and maintenance of phenotypically and phylogenetically distinct groups of organisms.

1 Digital Life Laboratory 136-93, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
2 Keck Graduate Institute, 535 Watson Drive, Claremont, CA 91711, USA.
3 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
4 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.



* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: adami{at}caltech.edu

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