Figure 9

Distributions of individual 'smartness'. In both series of frequency plots we have taken per 1000 time steps a sample of 100 individuals, over the interval [12.5·10⁴, 25·10⁴]. With 6 × 25 runs this results in 6 data sets of 325000 individuals. A. Frequency plot of smartness defined as the sum of an individual's phenotype. Note the logarithmic y-axis. B. Frequency plot of smartness as an individual's shortest cycle. We calculated the shortest cycle given the presence of the most abundant resources at each sampling point. A minimal number of resources was selected such that the grid was covered by a 0.95 fraction. The three panels show the distribution of shortest cycle lengths of individuals that could actually perform a cycle. For individuals that were incapable of doing so see additional file 4: Figure S3.