Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Surprise meSurprise meSubscribe
Encyclopedia

Evolution@Home

2001 volunteer computing project

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated July 23, 2023
Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

evolution@home was a volunteer computing project for evolutionary biology, launched in 2001. The aim of evolution@home is to improve understanding of evolutionary processes. This is achieved by simulating individual-based models. The Simulator005 module of evolution@home was designed to better predict the behaviour of Muller's ratchet.

The project was operated semi-automatically; participants had to manually download tasks from the webpage and submit results by email using this method of operation. yoyo@home used a BOINC wrapper to completely automate this project by automatically distributing tasks and collecting their results. Therefore, the BOINC version was a complete volunteer computing project. yoyo@home has declared its involvement in this project finished.

Watch videos about Evolution@HomeExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Evolution@Home”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.

Continue exploring

Related topics

Artificial life

Artificial Life, also referred to as ALife, is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986.

Digital organism

A digital organism is a self-replicating computer program that mutates and evolves. Digital organisms are used to study the dynamics of Darwinian evolution and to test or verify specific hypotheses or mathematical models of evolution.

Evolutionary computation

Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and a subfield of computational intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms, they are a family of population-based trial and error problem solvers with a metaheuristic or stochastic optimization character.