Last Monday, Luciftias Neurocam, the head of the Ecosystem Working Group came to Second Nature to talk about his work creating an artificial ecosystem in Second Life.

Luciftias, also known as Drexel University’s Dr Corey Hart, gave a very interesting overview of the origins of the project, some of the results so far and his ideas for the future. He then took questions and led a tour of the ecosystem.

If you missed out, we have recorded the talk and the questions: read on below the break.

To listen to Luciftias’s talk, get the audio here:

Luciftias talk (mp3, 28MB)

You can see the images of the species he mentions, in order, below. Underneath the pictures, see the text of the Q&A – thanks very much to Simargl Talaj for kindly transcribing Luciftias’ replies.

1. Coconut palm

2. Cannon plant

3. Tumblebee

4. Jellypod

5. Cannon plant with blossom

6. Wobblefish

Discussion and Q&A while viewing the ecosystem. Luciftias gave his replies by voice and Simargl Talaj transcribed them: hence the name in the below transcript. I have tried to edit for comprehension, so any typos or non-sequitors are my fault alone.

Simargl Talaj: A viral update is a script change in one organism that infects surrounding organisms
watch the plants, it happens – they are changing colors. That was a sign of infection with the new script, the viral update. Old plants about to die don’t get updated

There isn’t a predator out on the land ecosystem right now. They are destructive and I wanted you to have plenty to see. I will pull out a predator for you now. This is the basic grid raptor. This one isn’t scripted.

Here are tumblebees, See the tumblebees are drawn to the cannon blossoms as they are born – we are in an eruption of cannon blossoms, which is great. Here a tumblebee is resting. They rest after eating much. They swarm sponatneously depending upon the blossoming of the plants. It is an emergent behavior, not directly scripted. The tumblebees aren’t eaten by anything; we are open to new things to be introduced.

Now we’ll check out the aquatic system. Follow. The aquatic ecosystem is small, and so far has wobblefish and jellypods. The wobblefish eat the jellypods. Eventually there won’t be many pods to eat, so the fish population will crash, and the pods will increase again. We get a nice cycling pattern of populations. I’m not seeing jellypods – trying to get some for us. The jellypods are gettting eaten as soon as they appear. This is the mother for the colony, has a long life span, no tenacles. The children have tentacles, and move, and can found new colonies. Right now there are too many fish so we can’t see many jellypods. We’ll go look at a different colony.

Jellypods reproduce when they collide. The collision will push the jelly pod really far, and then they spawn.

The color depends on time of day they were born, in addition to factors in their genome. But the fish don’t know each others’ colors so it doesn’t have much effect.

Plato Pizzicato: How many species of fish are there? And what eats the fish?

Simargl Talaj: There is one kind of fish, the wobblefish. The new one will be a predator for the wobblefish, now being scripted, designed by Sabrina Soler.

Plato Pizzicato: what has been the major advantage of using SL for this work – visualization?

Simargl Talaj: Visualization, physics engine I don’t have to build myself, opportunity for teamwork and dividing tasks. It was nice to have a starting point, a sim with its own terrain, weather parameters. It’s a starting point for developing the ecosystem

Quelle Strom: will the fish escape to other islands?

Simargl Talaj: It has happened. I’ve developed recent protocols to stop it. Generally they die ono sim boundaries but in a few cases it hasn’t happened, so I’ve created a hunter killer that scans the periphery.

Joanna Wombat: I saw a gridlouse on the next island last week!

Troy McLuhan: The deer on JPL’s island keep invading the International Spaceflight Museum next door LOL

Simargl Talaj: Gridlouse have a script that times out and there is nothing for them to eat away from here – anything that gets out is basically dead.

Plato Pizzicato: is it easy to collect real time data – births, deaths, etc in SL?

Simargl Talaj: Data collection, yes, only recently finished Php scripting and it is on http://www.slecosystem.com/PopPlot.php

Plato Pizzicato: this is really impressive work!

Quelle Strom: are you going to start a garden centre / pet shop?

Simargl Talaj: I do sell some, but the ecosystem package itelf is pricy: Its a lot of work to install and get running. I do sell a simpler version but it’s not as nice as the whole shebang. Mostly the money goes into supporting the ecosystem. We had to pay rent on a previous sim but right now money is not a big issue for us

Joanna Wombat: Is this a complete labour of love, or is your university interested? I ask because I wonder how many universities are interested in real research in SL

Simargl Talaj: Some interest, increasing, into integrating this into research. I’m in the process of applying for NSF grant to study motor neurology in a context like this

CeAire Decosta: Which university?

Simargl Talaj: I’m at Drexel, in Philadelphia, USA

Plato Pizzicato: do you actually use weather in the simulation?

Simargl Talaj: Built-in weather systems affect things in the ecosystem, and wind impacts seed dispersion, jellypod drift. Rain is visually disabled here because there will be better tools later, Windlight maybe

Plato Pizzicato: Are you familiar with the a-life experiments on Svarga sim?

Simargl Talaj: Yes, I had early interaction with Laukosargas Svarog who developed Svarga… believe she’s no longer in SL. When last I talked to Lauk she had confined the ecosystem to a small patch because it caused instability when it was sim wide

Troy McLuhan: I think Svarga got sponsored by a company

Simargl Talaj: Svarga is now sponsored by the Electric Sheep. i don’t know the extent to which they’ve altered the ecosystem there.

Quelle Strom: there are only a few specieis here – do you need more for further kinds of emergent behaviour to be seen?

Simargl Talaj: We have 8 species here, the problem is limited time; if you want to add a species, please do! I have limited time to script things. We always look for new members – I would like new people to script, I’ve been doing the bulk of it

Plato Pizzicato: can visitors and observer interfere in anyway?

Simargl Talaj: Sure! Interfere! Create something that interacts or eats things — IM me and I’ll get you the documentation.

Quelle Strom: can we come back any time have a look?

Joanna Wombat: Absolutely, everybody always welcome!