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NAME

       avida - Auto-adaptive genetic system for Artificial Life research

SYNOPSIS

       avida-primitive [options]

       avida-viewer [options]

       avida-qt-viewer

DESCRIPTION

       Avida  is an auto-adaptive genetic system designed primarily for use as
       a platform in Digital or Artificial Life research.  The Avida system is
       based  on  concepts  similar  to  those  employed by the tierra program
       developed by Tom Ray. In lay terms, Avida is a digital world  in  which
       simple  computer  programs mutate and evolve. More technically, it is a
       population of self-reproducing strings with a  Turing-complete  genetic
       basis  subjected  to Poisson-random mutations. The population adapts to
       the combination of an intrinsic fitness  landscape  (self-reproduction)
       and  an externally imposed (extrinsic) fitness function provided by the
       researcher.

       By studying this  system,  one  can  examine  evolutionary  adaptation,
       general traits of living systems (such as self-organization), and other
       issues pertaining to theoretical or evolutionary  biology  and  dynamic
       systems.  The power of Avida is that it gives us a controllable digital
       system in which to study the theories of evolutionary  biology.  Often,
       we  can  study  elements  of  evolutionary theory that are difficult or
       impossible in biological systems.

OPTIONS

       -g[enesis] <filename>
              Set genesis file to be <filename>

       -h[elp]
              Help on options (this listing)

       -e[vents]
              Print a list of all known events

       -s[eed] <value>
              Set random seed to <value>

       -viewer <value>
              Sets Viewer to <value>

       -v[ersion]
              Prints the version number

       -set <name> <value>
              Overide the genesis file

       -l[oad] <filename>
              Load a clone file

       -loadpop <filename>
              Load a saved population file (precedence over load)

       -a[nalyze]
              Process analyze.cfg instead of normal run.

AUTHOR

       Avida is a joint project of the  Digital  Life  Laboratory,  headed  by
       Chris    Adami,    at    the   California   Institute   of   Technology
       (http://dllab.caltech.edu/) and Richard  Lenski’s  Microbial  Evolution
       laboratory  at Michigan State university (http://www.msu.edu/~lenski/).
       For more info on these groups or their research, please visit the links
       above.

       This manual page was written by Miriam Ruiz <little_miry@yahoo.es>, for
       the Debian project (but may be used by others).

SEE ALSO

       There is a directory with some starting data you can use as a base  for
       your research in /usr/share/alive/.  You just have to copy the contents
       of that directory wherever you  want  and  start  running  avida-viewer
       there.     You   can   find   HTML   documentation   about   avida   in
       /usr/share/doc/alive/html/.

       There are two viewer programs available, avida-viewer, which is a  text
       mode  one,  using  ncurses  library,  and  avida-qt-viewer,  which is a
       graphics viewer using qt widgets under the X Windowing System.

                              noviembre 23, 2004