Working with virtual plants

How cellular automata are used to model virtual plants

• Understand the self-assembling cellular automaton
  Download a .pdf version of the 2001 Functional Ecology paper here. Warning: this is copyright material for personal and private study only.

• View the latest self-assembling model
  Find out how the model is constructed and what it can do; download a PowerPoint (.ppt) presentation here.

• Try the latest self-assembling model
  Design your own plants, communities and environments; download an .exe file of the model and run your own simulations here.

• Get a CSR .SCR!
  See virtual plant communities grow on your desktop; download a screensaver (.scr) file here and save it in your folder c:\windows\system

  Learning from experiments with virtual plants

• CA modelling reproduces plant behaviour at several levels of organization

  In real experiments using virtual plants the CA model can reproduce a very wide range of whole-plant-, population- and community-level behaviour. All of these properties emerge from a ruleset acting only at the level of the CA module. For detailed examples see here.

• CA modelling explains plant biodiversity on just three assumptions

  Huge experiments (496 billion simulated plant–environment interactions) have shown that high diversity in plant communities can be sustained realistically and indefinitely. The three required conditions are (i) differentiation of plant life into distinct functional types, (ii) the presence of slight environmental heterogeneity, and (iii) a slight opportunity for invasion by plant propagules.

  First, see a graphical abstract here; then see the full paper here. You can run the model for yourself by visiting here.