Naming of Organisms

For the purpose of analysis of the system's behaviour, individual organisms are given names according to their genotype. The name is composed of a number followed by a string of (usually four) upper-case alphabetic characters. The number is the length of the genome (expressed as a number of bits) in the organism's initial cell. The character string is a unique identifier for that particular genome. Ancestor organisms inoculated into the system at the start of the run are named with the character string AAAA. If an offspring has an identical genotype to its parent, it will share the same name. If the offspring has a different genotype, then it is given a new name (the operating system keeps track of which names have already been issued, to avoid duplication). For example, the first organism to appear in the system that differs from the inoculated ancestors will be named with the character string AAAB. Should all character strings up to ZZZZ have been issued for organisms of a particular length, an extra A is added to the string (so the next organism of that length with a different genotype to its parent will be named with the character extension AAAAA).