Multi-Agent Simulations of Evolution and Speciation in Cichlid Fish

An agent-based simulation has been built to model speciation in cichlid fishes in the Great Lakes of Africa. A real natural system has been chosen as the target of simulation, rather than a generalised system. This focusses research towards open problems in cichlid biology, and provides a library of field research to drive the design and parametrisation of the simulation. Visualisations of the end results of simulations are presented to confirm that the simulated fish actually do speciate. A further experiment suggests that the potential for organisms to adapt has strong effects on the competitive exclusion principle, but that this cannot be used to explain the patterns of cichlid species found on rocky reefs in African lakes. The simulation has been written in pure Java rather than a general agent-based modelling platform. The reasons for using Java and a number of alternative platforms are described.