A genetic-evolutionary model to simulate population dynamics in the Calangos game

Calangos is an under development educational game based on the fauna and flora of the desert-like field of the sand dunes in the middle São Francisco River, located within the Caatinga biome in Brazil. One of the player´s goals is to manage the behavior of species of lizards that inhabit this biome, with consequences to their ecology and evolution. For the development of the game a genetic-evolutionary model, embedded in a simulator, is proposed. This model will be used to simulate predator-prey dynamics based on the Evolutionary Biology and Ecology literature. The objective of this paper is to introduce the genetic-evolutionary model embedded in the simulator and present some key experimental findings. It will be shown that under certain environmental conditions lizard populations are only able to survive if allowed to evolve. The results will also show the main causes of death (malnutrition, dehydration, predation or aging), the diet preferences (vegetables or insects) of lizards and their relationship with specific environmental conditions.