Symbiotic Programming: Crossbreeding Cellular Automaton Rules on the CAM-6

One way to evolve new artificial lifeforms is to fuse existing forms in var ious ways . If one wishes for a new lifeform 's program to be the same size as each of it s parent pr ogram s, then one might take half of each parent program and pat ch the two halves together . T his method is typical of sexual repr oduction, and of the genet ic programming approach . A different meth od of crossbreeding two of three lifeforms is to write a double or t riple length program which includes the full code of the original programs and which provides an arena in which the programs can interact . This might be called a symbiot ic programming approach . In this pap er I will descri be som e new and lively cellular au tomaton rul es whi ch I have found through symbiot ic programming on the CAM-6 cellul ar automaton m achine [1,4].