Plots the levels of 4 species in an ecology. The species oscillate, taking turns being the most numerous in the small ecosystem. Often the 4 species co-exist for a long time. Below the plot is a grid of individuals of 4 species, each species a different color. Each individual has up to 8 neighbors. Think of it as a goo-rock-paper-scissors ecology: Rock is predator to scisssors: Rocks beats scissors if 2 or more rocks are next to scissors (you can change this threshold with the slider). Likewise, scissors is predator to paper. Goo is predator to Rock. Paper is predator to Goo. If 2 or more predators are next to prey, then the predator eats the prey. Rocks (red squares), papers (blue), scissors (green), and goo (orange) are randomly scattered at the start, but soon we see swirls of rocks overtake scissors, scissors overtake paper, paper overtake goo, and goo overtake rock. Try also in turbowarp: https://turbowarp.org/655690009
Here I focus on the plots. (I shared a larger 4-way ecosystem without plots several months earlier). The plots show how the 4 species often level off in a dynamic equilibrium with each species oscillating very near 25% of the total total living individuals. The most interesting slider setting is 2 predators or more needed to beat neighboring prey. Then try setting the slider to 3: notice this can leave a few lone squares protected and stable, unlike the 3-way rock-paper-scissors. Setting it to 1 doesn't yield much pattern. Note that more than half of the grid of individuals is hidden by the plotting. My previously shared rock-paper-scissors models are cleaner and simpler than this 4-way version. But this model here show that 4 predators can coexist for a long time as well, as in the 3-way version. A few lone individuals can exist for a lon time in rows, because in that configuration they don't outnumber prey, unlike the 3-way RPS.
