ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a simple evolutionary system 'evoloop' implemented on a deterministic nine-state five-neighbor cellular automata (CA) space. C. Langton's self-reproducing (SR) loop is one of the most famous models of self-reproduction on CA. It was implemented on a simple eight-state, five-neighbor CA space. The reason the structurally dissolvable self-reproducing (SDSR) loop did not show any apparent evolvability is that its state-transition rules, which designated all mechanisms necessary for self-reproduction, were specialized only for a set of particular situations that appeared in an ordinary self-reproductive process of the original SR loop. On granting adaptability to the self-reproductive mechanism of the SDSR loop, some inadvertent complication of the old state-transition rules became a nuisance. It is remarkable that, owing to the adaptability, some intriguing interactions of loops emerge in the evoloop world that have never occurred in the SDSR loop world. The key factors to create competitive systems is obviously both mortality of individuals and spatial interaction between them.
