Self-Organizing Spatio-temporal Pattern Formation in Two-Dimensional Daisyworld

Abstract : Watson and Lovelock’s daisyworld model [1] was devised to demonstrate how the biota of a world could stabilise it, driving it to a temperature regime that favoured survival of the biota. The subsequent studies have focused on the behaviour of daisyworld in various fields. This study looks at the emergent patterns that arise in 2D daisyworlds at different parameter settings, demonstrating that a wide range of patterns can be observed. Selecting from an immense range of tested parameter settings, we present the emergence of complex patterns, Turing-like structures, cyclic patterns, random patterns and uniform dispersed patterns, corresponding to different kinds of possible worlds. The emergence of such complex behaviours from a simple, abstract model serve to illuminate the complex mosaic of patterns that we observe in real-world biosystems.