Computational Ecosystems in a Changing Environment

We study the adaptive behavior of a computational ecosystem in the presence of time-periodic resource utilities as seen, for example, in the day–night load variations of computer use and in the price fluctuations of seasonal products. We do so within the context of the Huberman-Hogg model of such systems. The dynamics is studied for the cases of competitive and cooperative payoff functions with time-modulated resource utilities, and the system’s adaptability is measured by tracking its performance in response to a time-varying environment.