Ecological disturbance maintains and promotes biodiversity in an artificial plant ecology

A model of plant growth, competition and reproduction in three dimensions was constructed using L-systems to simulate plant growth, ray tracing to simulate sunlight and shading, and a steady-state genetic algorithm to simulate evolution by natural selection. Simulated plant growth conformed to expected trade-o s between, for instance, growing up and growing out. Simulated cohorts exhibited conventional population-level phenomena such as obeying the self-thinning law. Competition between species was simulated under various disturbance regimes. Undisturbed, a K-selected type of plant species dominated at equilibrium. However, under certain disturbance regimes, diverse life-history strategies were able to coexist at equilibrium, and even speciate