Bram van Dijk . org

Studying microbial ecology and evolution across multiple levels

Month: February 2019

The creative evolution of digital organisms

February 6, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Experimental evolution at Montpellier 

On the 22nd of August (2018), I had the pleasure to present work on Virtual Microbes at II Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology. It was very inspiring to finally meet some of the people who designed/conducted the awesome experimental evolution studies I came to know and love over the past 5-10 years. It was also somewhat a relief to see how, vice versa, Virtual Microbes were well received by said experimentalists. Before this becomes any more self-serving, I’d just like to share this tweet by Vaughn Cooper: “Evolved populations learn to trust us, but die if not fed”. I could not have put it any better 🙂

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Is the whole more, or less than the sum of its parts?

February 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

If you have ever heard about emergence, you have likely come across the phrase “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. The idea is simple. If a collection of small parts give rise to something with more complex traits, the system does more than one could have expected from any of the smaller parts. Here I discuss some simple computer models to illustrate how one could also argue for the opposite view: the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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