Figure 4. Variable richness simulations.

The lines in each panel shows evolutionary trajectories, starting with controlled processing C = 0 but with incrementally higher values of R_o (x-axis). For those populations that exhibit limit cycles, many cycles are depicted and a single exemplar is shown with a darker line. Population size N was fixed at 10,000 for all simulations. (A) When the performance threshold T_R was small and several populations were able to modify environmental richness R. (B) A larger T_R reduced the number of populations able to modify R, but increased the range of the resulting limit cycles. (C) When T_R was large, only two populations achieved sufficient mean energy levels E and mean C to modify R.