Some of these were written by a human and do nothing more than make copies of themselves in the RAM of the virtual computer. The others evolved from the first, and are included to illustrate the power of natural selection. The operating system of the virtual computer provides memory management and timesharing services. In addition, the operating system provides a very elaborate observational system that keeps a record of births and deaths, sequences the code of every creature, and maintains a genebank of successful genomes. The operating system also provides facilities for automating the ecological analysis, that is, for recording the kinds of interactions taking place between creatures.
Memory is organized into informational patterns that exploit CPU time for self-replication.
Mutation generates new forms, and evolution proceeds by natural selection as different genotypes compete for CPU time and memory space. Diverse ecological communities have emerged. This evolution in a bottle may prove to be a valuable tool for the study of evolution and ecology.