COBWEB For Mac

COBWEB is a small application developed to explore how components of systems (people, animals, bacteria, etc) adapt to environmental change and environmental variability.

COBWEB contains two major components: a population of agents that move, eat and reproduce and the resources that the agents consume, which are also variable in location.

The agents make decisions on when to move, where to move and when to eat. In combination with optional communication between agents and memory, the population is able to adapt to some environments and fail to adapt in others.

This process can result in the occurrence of surprising events, whether it is a sudden extinction after a long period of stability, a recovery from what appears to be certain extinction or a sudden change in population for no apparent reason.

These surprising events can be expected in any complex system, and their occurrence in this simple abstraction of complexity is a very important aspect of COBWEB software.