Artificial Life is the New Frontier in Science

Embark on a journey through The Bibites, an awe-inspiring evolution simulation that is redefining our understanding of life itself. Let's dive deep into the labyrinth of artificial ecosystems, brought to life through intricate lines of code and neural networks. Witness firsthand how these fascinating digital worlds are teeming with creatures that adapt, survive, and thrive in ever-changing environments. As we peel back the layers, you'll discover the groundbreaking community research that propels this virtual realm into uncharted territories. This is not just code; this is the new frontier of life-complex, evolving, and waiting to be explored. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of The Bibites and unlock the untapped potential of artificial ecosystems.
NEW Official Website: www.TheBibites.com
NEW Shop to support the project's development: www.thebibites.com/shop/
Register for the Science Fair: / discord
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The Bibites is an Artificial Life (Living AI!) simulation where I recreate some biological processes and let the lifeforms live, eat, reproduce, and mutate, leading to active evolution.
They can evolve their body through a genetic algorithm and their behavior through a custom neural network algorithm.
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NEW Official Website: www.thebibites.com/
Follow me on Twitter : / thebibites
Support the project on Patreon : / thebibites
Join the community on Reddit : / thebibites
Download and play the game : leocaussan.itch.io/the-bibites
Subscribe to the channel: / @thebibitesdigitallife
Contact information: [e-mail]
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Credits:
Footages from Pexels.com and Videezy.com
Procedural Sprites by Brax - Twitter@Braxiations
Songs by Fireballme and RPGPenguin
#evolution #AI #devlog #simulation #ecosystem

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

NEW Official Website: www.TheBibites.com NEW Shop to support the project's development: www.thebibites.com/shop/ Register for the Science Fair: discord.gg/rNDMdNjQ2R

[@baileescott401]

Can you post a link to the discord in the description? I've been observing The Bibites for awhile and never knew there was a discord! :D Edit: I found it from searching google easily, so its all good :)

[@YEWCHENGYINMoe]

lol

[@johndoe.commentingpurposes3247]

@@YEWCHENGYINMoe ?

[@Tyrope]

@@baileescott401 It's... it's in the comment you replied to?

[@bonkaiblue7906]

Dont forget Fungi.

[@samueltrusik3251]

The functional ant colonies were amazing. By far my favorite part. Cannot wait for when they build actual colony structures.

[@Creativebb1]

they could make it where when the workers "mature" instead of laying eggs they can have a chance to gain(evolve?) specific traits or roles such as Builder, Fighter, and where they still work for the same colony but look like different species because they perform different tasks for the queen(s). bit of a ramble sorry

[@samanthabronder9861]

i wonder what whoudl happesn after the qeen dies dose one of the worker becomes a new qeen who knows

[@atleyf3500]

​@@samanthabronder9861when workers don't smell queen pheromones anymore they become one so yes that would happen

[@SkaForFood]

Is there any chance that something like that could generate through the Bibite simulation now without engineering?

[@dino-qn8tn]

he should add them ingame along with the predator and also I found a species of vulture bibites thatTHIRVE with no food or anything from me with rapid evolution is it just me that that happend 2?

[@enriquealanis6108]

Hello! As a researcher in population genetics, I would love to see the addition of "Junk DNA", to see some pure genetic drift, as well as highly polymorphic DNA regions (as happens in humans with the HLA region) and also some degree of "linkage" between genes. All these things would lead to more emergent properties, with a high didactic potential. I would be pleased to talk to you about these concepts in more detail if you want.

[@Shad094]

In essence some brain nodes are "junk", until suddenly they are not. For example, if you run a simulation without infections, then the immunity node is "junk", but may become establised in a population. Until 100 generations later, it might suddenly end up being used as a regulatory gene for something actually useful.

[@marioiram3501]

I’d love to see this in the simulation.

[@lavabiscuits]

​@Shad094 Yeah, though it would be cool for physicalogical genes to have similar properties.

[@anormobilegaming2237]

I saw a lot of junk brain nodes in the system time to time.

[@stormeclouds7010]

Please join the Bibite Research Conglomerate, the discord in the description of the video. I'd love to talk about it with you

[@Skarix]

I’m so glad to see how much Bibite research has advanced since the times when we had to publish it all as a Reddit post. I unfortunately had to turn my attention elsewhere towards bigger and more personal projects, but as a proud member of the Bibite Research Conglomerate, I applaud the dedication and passion of my peers. Also thank you for FINALLY making merch happen! I’m so excited!

[@SineN0mine3]

15:00 the fact that this bibite doesn't draw a perfect Fibonacci square is actually part of why it's so impressive. Anyone with a basic understanding of programming languages can draw a perfect one, that's fairly trivial. Using neural networks to approximate one is a far more complex problem, and the imperfections are an indication of that. I also think it's interesting that we often see Fibonacci patterns in nature, but that they too are imperfect due to the chaos of nature itself. Perhaps it's due to evolutionary pressures that a perfect Fibonacci pattern is unlikely in nature, it seems there's a lot we could learn about fields other than evolutionary biology from these experiments as well.

[@CAMSLAYER13]

Close is usually good enough for animals. you don't need to be the perfect life form, just capable in your environment

[@logicbuilder1204]

The bibite brains are more like a programming language, in fact I think it is actually turing complete. If it was exactly like a neural net, it would be very difficult to engineer. The real reason it was difficult for the bibites is making them turn the right amount, move the right distance, etc.

[@17abcdgh]

Upon further inspection, it seems like Incognito Guy accidentally created a Bibite that creates the “Tribonacci Sequence”, which is like Fibonacci but adds the previous three numbers together. My theory for this is that a loop can have a minimum of three steps, thus causing it to store three pieces of information instead of two

[@zix2421]

Hurray, I'm very glad that this channel is alive. It inspired me, one day I will make my own simulation

[@datunasikharulidze8962]

Can you show me

[@datunasikharulidze8962]

Im intreseted

[@soulwingcatshot9547]

@@datunasikharulidze8962 I think that you have forgotten to read the part that says "one day"

[@Nathouuuutheone]

​@@datunasikharulidze8962show you what? Why would a random person naking their own personal project show you anything? There are already some projects on KZbin you can see the entire development process of, why need this one stranger to share their personal project with you?

[@samuelthecamel]

I tried before, and it's not as easy as it looks to get results like this, but it was a pretty fun project regardless.

[@Germanunkol]

The fact that you have a research community building around your project is so awesome! Keep it up! :)

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Agreed 😍 I feel blessed by the gods of Science (science)

[@couldntcareless7884]

I don’t know if it was suggested before, but something like a dense environment you have to dig through (and the tunnels being easy to go through), would be nice. To simulate living in ground, like ants.

[@user-vp5fh7xm9q]

I’d just like to say that this is an amazing project. The bibites has all kinds of cool emergent behaviors like autocrine/paracrine signaling with the pheromone system, predator-prey chasing cycles, and a Turing-complete neural network system. With a little more complexity, this could easily be one of the most dynamic and scientifically accurate evolution simulators on the internet. It blows my mind that you’re already trying to go further with modular genomes and the BIOME algorithm. Somebody needs to get this guy 100M subs so he can buy a supercomputer

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Thanks

[@wistlov9248]

I completely forgot about this. Good to see it still going!

[@Arraydeess]

Bibite produced pellets like milk, waste, or even walls/ barriers would be interesting to see and open up new niches

[@prinnyEXE]

Waist would be a very interesting feature the extremely low nutritional value and potential toxicity of waist/specialized organs for prosessing.

[@doompoison2365]

A bibbet making barriers around itself kinda sounds like a cacoon!

[@Arraydeess]

@@doompoison2365 I was thinking more of an anthill but your idea sounds cool too

[@sunred6150]

Can’t wait to see a few days ago I was I checked up on the channel and was a bit sad there was no new video. But let’s go new video I love artificial life!

[@Lobotomistmankyeh]

love bibites and digital life projects in general. makes me wish I could do math or understand code, but just starting a simulation and seeing what happens, watching the little guys evolve, is magical.

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

It's never too late to learn 💪

[@bhavyapal]

​​@@TheBibitesDigitalLife can you share some part of the code so we could see how you created this amazing simulation .

[@aircraftcarrierwo-class]

I've been following this project pretty much since you started and it's such a cool thing to see how far it's come and what the community is doing. I look forward to seeing where the Bibites go from here!

[@liveinamber1307]

1) The new sprites look amazing. I wonder when we'll get access to those. 2) The infinite pheromones idea worries me. Three is limiting, but there should be no more than six. It would be a nightmare to differentiate between turquoise, aquamarine and cyan pheromones. 3) I'm impressed at how many people managed to get stable predator populations. A common problem I ran into was that they can't distinguish between head and tail. They keep ramming into each other's jaws so predation was just not viable. Learning to avoid plants is slightly easier though. 4) The "virus option" is still redundant and I think it's a missed opportunity. Viruses always converge towards non-lethal variants. I'd instead repurpose the system into a toxicity mechanic. Toxins would be permeate the food chain, potentially leading to aposematic colorations and warning signals. 5) Plant evolution when? It doesn't need to be anything fancy. Personally I'd make a system that spawns random plant types at the start. Then, as Bibites consume certain types, some plant types proliferate while others go extinct when their population percentage reaches zero. You won't answer this, but I wish you a good day regardless :3

[@iuricunhamurakami8261]

You could always just assign values to each color, so you dont need to rely on your vision to diferentiate them

[@WarioNumberOne]

The "infinite" (or I assume 8-bit RGB) pheromones could come with an extra neuron in the brain: ability to differentiate. This way, Bibites that use a lot of pheromones will start using closer colors, while most others will be incentivised to keep using differentiable colors

[@lavabiscuits]

Plant evolution is a very important change, I think they need more time.

[@RustyhairedAlp9575]

Viruses converge towards non-lethal variants in real life as well

[@MrShadowThief]

An alternative could be a neuron that takes the RGB value of a pheromone as an input, so similar colors yield similar outputs.

[@umfa9817]

Take notes on what you originally planned to be the project, and make plans for it to continue to be what you wanted, specially after the inevitable growth it'll experience. Take into account new employees, your business partners, the community, legal license over the project, how not to turn profit into the main goal by accident, etc. And always keep in mind: Not everyone who puts you through hard times is your enemy, and not everyone who gets you out of hard times is your friend.

[@Velntaru]

I'd especially love a set of keychains or small desk figures of some Bibites down the road!

[@mchsprod]

I’ve been following this project since the first video, and I’m truely proud of where it has come since it started 4 years ago. The main question I have is regarding whether the project will ever “near completion”, or if it be like Dwarf Fortress where the creators just keep working on it forever. I’m excited to see researchers discovering this project and using it for professional research someday. Games have been used as tools for studies before, but Bibites has unlimited potential for evolutionary research. Keep up the good work!

[@newnamwen8009]

One thing I think would be interesting to see is if certain predators could evolve to slow down and conserve energy and only hunt when they get hungry. Another interesting feature is that the predator could examine the numbers of other bibits and decide not to overhunt if the numbers are too low.

[@daeltam]

Thank you very much for this project, I'm actually beginning biological studies and I hope that I will soon be able to look deep into your project because this is big ! I only run a few simulations on my computer but this is already fascinating !

[@pollo_frito22]

I remember that when I got covid and I was on a lockdown, I discovered The Bibites and I can safely say that this simulation is one of the best things that happened to me then

[@trevorBbracket]

not what the video is about per se but ive noticed these vids are getting really well written too! theres always been clarity in the information but i think your finding a good flow so to speak. great work as always boss, both your uploads and the sim itself have been some of my favourite things to just sit there and watch lately o/

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Thanks! And yay 😁 I get a little better each time, and it's very rewarding

[@D-angelin.Moarar]

I love this channel and simulation so much! The presentation is always so sweet, and the code is simply impressive. The sheer level of complexity this has risen to and which evolutionary niches can be portrayed in a stable ecosystem just blows my mind! So happy for you how this awesome project is developing and how involved its community is. Hope all is going well with the studio and that this will receive even greater attention.

[@luluga5193]

Really happy to know that this channel is live again . I really enjoy this content. I really wanted to play this but I don't have a pc . Will there ever be an mobile version

[@MrGustavier]

One main thing that lacks from your simulation (if you want it to be a simulation of the world), is the implementation of fluid currents. An enormous part of the microcosmos on Earth uses modified flagella to create currents to bring nutrients to their mouth (see rotifers), which allows for a kind of sedentary life style that in turn allow for a different type of predation etc...

[@marksmolenskij6068]

A falcon heavy launch AND a new bibites vid? This day just keeps getting better and better.

[@n_n_s335]

You are my biggest source of inspiration, I even created my own simulation to gain more insights on how a simulation like that works. Multiprocessing allowed me to simulate more bibites

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Awesome to hear

[@Chareddragon]

Perhaps creating a mineral or barrier item for the simulation would help with creating new scenarios. So that players don’t have to make their own out of plants

[@Karl_Marx]

These bibites are going to Conquer our World one time...

[@Stoneworks]

This is the most wonderful evolution simulation on KZbin, I subbed and eagerly await seeing more from you and your community!

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Thanks so much! Working on the next video and stream release

[@SleepyMedia]

This is such an important tool for aiding scientists and exciting an emerging generation of new scientists. Thank you for constantly working on this.

[@BresciGaetano]

I love your project and most importantly your attitude. I'm so Happy to have found you almost at the begining and seen you growing so much. Keep up the good work.

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Thank you so much!

[@acvproductions]

I've been in a rough patch recently but wanted to say im happy to have stumbled upon these videos. This might sound odd, but these videos are comforting in a way. I hope to see more, it's an interesting project and the videos are entertaining.

[@gigaprofisi]

I picked up watching this channel again yesterday, and here you are uploading again lol. Even more to watch! Thank you for making these videos and programs.

[@BionicScorp]

As someone who has been using your simulation since 2017 I would like to say its amazing how far you have come and if you see this could you share the bibit file that is the ant like species of bibits?

[@jossypoo]

As an ESL teacher, your English accent is getting AMAZING! Since the videos take so much work, we get to hear a long time slice!

[@robertschwalb4469]

It'd be cool if you added more diversity options for ecosystems. Like temperature, and maybe you could even add a dynamic option as well so that it could automatically change overtime without any additional input from the player.

[@kosuken]

YES. ANOTHER VIDEO. can’t wait to run simulations for weeks on end again!

[@takatacheroki2624]

Now I'm wondering if, in a "world" where there are obstacles and more closed environments, some bibites might evolve migratory behaviors, or even a specific migratory route that is used across multiple generations of the same species.

[@sixtenwidlund4258]

This project is highly interesting and inspiring, I can’t wait to see what’s to come! Amazing job, the bibits are great!

[@Pollux70]

Sentience is a scale, and you keep increasing the Bibites sentience. Pheromones are the first form of primitive language before sound. It will be stunning when someone makes a translator that can interpolate pheromones to text. It's so amazing you can work on this.

[@EightLittleBears]

Honestly one of the best channels out there ❤

[@shoebkhaja3697]

Didn’t expect you to be here

[@treethreethree]

Words cannot express how truly blown away I am at what you have created, and the immense creativity of the community that you have inspired. The emergent behaviours are incredibly fascinating; at first I was dumbfounded by the fact that your simulation allowed for parastic behaviours to emerge - then I saw the ant analogs and my jaw dropped. Bravo!

[@beaub152]

Been following this project for years now, glad it is still getting the love it deserves

[@HalfEatenPotatoChip]

I think you should add some sort of bush that Bibites can't see through but can walk through, then we could see some really cool pouncing mechanics for predators. Secondly, if you think about real life predators, when they pounce on their prey, they don't just bite them and let them move around as they please, when they pounce, they pin their prey to the ground while they bite. I think you should make the grabbing trait from parasites or something similar easier/possible to evolve in normal Bibites.

[@tiramisuterror5337]

Yay new bibites video!!! These are always so exciting to watch :)

[@JasperPeters]

Thanks for reading this. I've really enjoyed following this project!

[@TheBibitesDigitalLife]

Thanks for the kind words 😌

[@desolatedsouls]

So much beautiful and heartwarming moments in the video. Y'all are the best!

[@FloridaMeng]

Thank you for keeping up with this and making it in the first place. This is important.

[@JonathanArcher100]

I think that theproject could profit from expainding the environment of the bibits instead of the bibites themselves. An example would be: - tempeature - pressure (bar), to simulate more thinner air or deep ocean - more ways of breathingm like gills, lungs etc. as oxygen can be extracted in different ways - snow and lava, and resilence to those as some organisms like next to lava vents - swimming, flying, digging - natural disasters - add water as essential source of life besides food - Toxicity and toxic elements, like radiation areas and resilience to them- think about the wild life in Cernobyl, it's amazing. Those areas could cause stronger and more frequent mutations - and don't forget that some of these parameters could vary over time, like seasons The limit is only imagination!

[@Sarahlouisseize]

This project has been a joy to watch evolve over the last two years i've been following the bibite journey. There's something fascinating about exploring the line between alive and conscious with these projects.

[@thatprogramer]

Really Nice to see all the new updates and community changes!

[@PokeDeFish]

been following the bibites for a while now and just love what you have been able to achieve. this can be used as a tool like a looking glass into our planets past and answer some questions about how some evolutionary processes may have taken place. keep up the great work!

[@PyrotheFlareon]

In terms of merch? A shirt would be great, if it's possible. The Bibites feel like they'd be a great shirt design.

[@hamburgerbroz6439]

wow, congrats on the founding! another amazing video, the potential and applications and entertainment of the bibites never fails to bring joy :)

[@masterrenataking3904]

this is such a coo project, i feel like in the future, this will be a massive contribution to our understanding of life and how it works!

[@GreenDeemonll]

Im excited for the Future of this amazing Project and community!!!

[@erickekkn]

Glad to see another post on the channel. Keep up the great work!

[@2kaza]

Amazing work mate, fantastic to see a great idea developed in such a community driven fashion, don’t let money sour the vision! Best of luck with future development!

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

This area has been continuously expanding for a while with work like yours and your contributors

[@liamsylvain8789]

You did so great, it is people like you that inspire me to do resarch one day in these topic. Keep the good work you are wonderful.

[@bencressman6110]

I know it’ll come eventually, but one of the things I find most interesting about evolution, is the effect of the environment. I like what that person did with the food pellets to make walls, but even that is very basic. I’d love to see a handful of different materials with different properties, different parts of the map that had different environmental properties, like climates. I think it would also be really cool to add gravity in some way. The way of doing this that I think would be coolest, would be to treat this “Petrie dish” instead as a vertical ocean with no floor. You could then introduce a 2D, terraria style land and the bibites could evolve to be amphibious and eventually terrestrial. I also want to see actual evolved plants (could/should be bibites themselves) instead of energy pellets. Then there’s so much more room for coevolution and depth. Anyways, I love this simulation so much!! I’m so glad the community is growing and vibrant, and I can’t wait to get a computer so I can join in the fun. Best of luck and congrats on forming the Studio!!

[@gimps3937]

Welcome back to KZbin!! Glad to see you back!!!❤❤

[@AndrewBrownK]

inspiring to see how far bibites have come, I hope the future is just as prosperous

[@pystl]

Incroyable de voir l'envol qu'a pris ton projet! Je t'encourage à faire une version française de te vidéo pour faire découvrir ce monde merveilleux à encore plus de gens. Encore bravo!

[@grumbo8634]

Just wanna show my appreciation and support for this project. It's genuinely ond of my favorite things ever. Been following it from the start and I'm so happy it's still going on and that it appears to only be the beginning. It's all wonderfully inspiring work, creative, beautiful, interesting and useful. As always, can't wait for the next video !

[@cecilpham9074]

Congrats on the new games studio! Very exciting for the development of the game

[@kiancuratolo903]

I just wanted to say the community for this game is amazing, I joined the discords and just very helpful people all around. I managed to get a pretty good sim going, Hoping to try some more as new updates come out!

[@user-oh6uw9mu9u]

It's always so cool seeing progress on this project! The "vultures in a desert" predation was not all what I expected but it makes so much sense... Good luck with the studio!

[@pepekhow5876]

I just start watch this channel 2 day ago and see a date of latest clip is seven month kinna make me lost some hope but now not anymore. Thank you for such a good quality video keep it up mate.👍👍

[@BradenJohnYoung]

Really looking forward to seeing where this goes -- it's already such a fascinating project

[@majormelon8855]

You deserve the hype you get from this project. As a researcher, not in biology but elsewhere, I can certainly see the merit of this independently developed simulation. Especially being able to compare it to similar simulations and see why behaviors emerge despite completely different code is wn invaluable asset to the scientific community.

[@ednojunior4080]

So excited to see what the bibite world will evolve into!!!

[@beanworld4695]

This is amazing I have always been fascinated by the idea of evolving species

[@santiagomontaldo9346]

altought my english is not perfect, i love watching the videos about your simulation and i am so happy that this comminity is getting bigger

[@darwinmini8332]

i stopped watching this series for like half a year and now i cam back and oh my god its grown so much

[@ricolorenz7307]

Congratulations on creating something that's so successful! I think that it's great to have such an involved community. Make sure that you don't let them get out of your hands! Implement the great ideas into the simulation, and let the mediocre or niche ideas remain as mods. I have to say I really love the "top species" video you did earlier. Now that so much technology has been developed to create ideal bibets, I think it would be great to see another "top species" video.

[@jakerose8638]

One of the best simulators I have ever had the joy to play, and it isn't a complete game! Love it and am waiting patiently (well sort of) for the new update :) Thank you for making this!

[@zh9664]

at the start i was skeptical, but by the end i think the bibites community is actually pretty cool. i've been following the development of the bibites from the first video you released on them, and it's crazy to see how far it's come. i liked that skin mod you showed for them too.

[@beansaretasty5230]

You should allow for competent codors and approved bibiters to volunteer to help code the project to speed up the progress of the development of The Bibites.

[@leevilaine8479]

Nice, can't wait for the new update!

[@uMonstr0]

13 minutes in, and I cannot express how fascinating both the community's experiments and the game is. This game never ceases to impress

[@wolftaske]

This is my favorite model for evolution, keep up the good work.

[@Frigsman]

Keep up the great work man I love what you are doing here and hope that one day the Bibites becomes an amazing learning tool as well as scientific simulator for the understanding of evolution. Also a side note of mine have you thought about adding more types of Bibites as in not just carbon based Bibites but maybe Bibites that run on thermal or solar energy. Just a little idea I had for it you can not add it if it sounds lame anyways have a great day!

[@yeahpng4957]

Extending the time that eggs take to hatch so that bibites can eat them could be another good way to encourage omnivory and assist in the evolution of carnivores

[@StevenIngram]

Funny - some types of ants in the real world have multiple queens. The $5 word for such colonies is polygyne. So even though the swapping of soldiers between multiple queens wasn't the desired outcome, it did manage to replicate something that occurs in nature all the same. :)

[@idiotandco.1750]

I wonder if multiple queens evolved first, and then single queens later.

[@420roachdoggjr]

this is one of the coolest projects on the platform!

[@agustindasilva1767]

Wow i remember one of your videos a long time ago when i was interested in evolution (speculative evolution most of all). Seeing how far its come i have great hopes for its future. Youve earned yourself a new subscriber!

[@jeremiahk5335]

Yah...long time but yah....new version dropping soon ?......absolutely love this....

[@teambellavsteamalice]

Awesome seeing this project evolve!

[@dylancope]

Super interesting case studies! Really cool to see how much the community has grown around this project :) it's a great time to be working in ALIFE

[@carbonateofsodium]

He's finally back with another awesome video❤❤❤❤

[@doompoison2365]

Great video! The capabilities of these little creatures are infinite, so you ever plan to make a mobile version of the simulation?

[@Jens_Heika]

This project will continue to be very fascinating.

[@Kraus-]

Thanks for the bibites. It's a super cool tool. Educational and fun lmao. Hoping for water and land in the future.

[@enklaev1465]

I really hope the artstyle never changes i love it

[@tekbox7909]

hope we can see more videos about these kinds of projects

[@merikmalhads1676]

I'm no computer programmer so I can't contribute much on the actual simulation stuff but as a biochemist I absolutely love the concept of simulated evolution. If I ever get the money to contribute, I would love to join this project or projects like it so we can study accelerated ecosystem development just to get a grasp of what possible areas evolution can and did happen over the history of life on our planet. From what I can see now, as far as two dimensional ecosystems go, this is already quite advanced and I like that limited eusociality is now possible but there are some interesting places that might interest you and your community where that can go. Firstly, I'm not sure the limitations surrounding the generation of plant-based food but the first thing that comes to mind is a photosynthetic lifeform route. As this is similar to an ocean environment, areas of algae-like blooming seems to already be usable but it makes me wonder if it is possible to have primary producers restricted by surface area of light or something similar to that. There are mobile microscopic photosynthesizers and it would be impressive to see if the lack of larger organisms is due to limitations in either limitations in photosynthetic machinery or if it was just a lack of chloroblast symbiosis in animalian cells before the cambrian explosion. Also, after seeing stable animal parasitism and scavanger populations, it makes me wonder if fungi may be possible in the bibite simulations. When you can't move or photosynthesize, you often have to get very chemically (or in this case digestive-programs) creative in how you get your nutrition. Secondly, on the pheromone front: Recently, a new branch of biology has begun to take shape and has been labeled "plant behavioural biology." Studies in this field have learned that plants when under threat from herbivores, many plants respond in several different ways. As they cannot move or fight back, they instead release alarm pheromones while toxifying their tissues with bitter compounds to deter the herbivore. The alarm pheromones when received by other plants will cause them to both produce the bitter toxins for themselves as well as sending those same toxins to the plant under assault (if it is the same species of course) through root or symbiotic mycelium in order to aid their "friends." This same resource sharing is seen sometimes in trees with older trees giving nutrients directly to new saplings of their species which may indicate why old growth forests fare better and regenerate faster than second growth forests after human clearcutting. The same pheromones, if received by local predator species, will actually attract them to the area of the herbivore predation in hopes of possible prey. Many plants have actually been shown to be selective about what pheromones they release based on what herbivore saliva they sense as to better call the specific predator to predate on the feeding herbivore most effectively. This is actually something many people who like the smell of cut grass experience as they grass is not able to sense any saliva so calls for every predator it can signal hoping that something will be able to kill whatever is "eating" it. It is also why you often find more wasps, spiders and other insect predators in your freshly mowed lawn. Lastly, for the ecosystem engineers in the crowd, I propose shifting currents of resource spawning. Easiest to see in the ocean but most ecosystems in the real world have shifting locations of rich nutrient production which can cause complex migratory behaviours in many animal species. Some like jellyfish and Portuguese man of wars exploit this by passively sweeping through active currents while others like humpback whales, wildebeests or monarch butterflies actively migrate to follow these regions over the seasons. There are also unique events like herring spawning or salmon runs which move massive amounts of resources into new ecosystems to be unintentionally spread into predator and detrivore food chains in areas far from where they initially fed linking deep/open ocean environments inextricably with costal and interior forests. Another one that actually requires no living nutrient carriers is the link between the Amazon rainforest and its soil source: the Sahara Desert. As odd as it seems, the soil in the rainforest's ground is actually quite awful and for the longest time it was difficult to understand where the plants were getting their nutrients from but with an observation from the ISS watching clouds of dust from the Sahara get blown across the south Atlantic, it was found that the soil for the forest is actually raining down and the plants there are actually designed to grab nutrients that other plants get from the ground from the air and rainwater. Connected ecosystems is definitely an interesting area of simulated life that might be fun if you guys want to try it. Okay that's all for the ideas I can propose that might work with this system. It is indeed an impressive simulation with a lot of diverse possibilities. It's already more advanced than I thought possible but it is really fun to see what you guys create

[@krave3746]

Missed you brother, Good to know you are back !

[@Lumberjack_king]

While im still sceptical this project is so fascinating im looking forward to see its progress