title: Artificial life and speciation, a case study: heterochromatin and speciation in the Microtus savii Group (Rodentia-Arvicolinae).
abstract: Artificial life is a tool which is used for simulation of peculiar cases of evolutionary events. The main characteristic of artificial life is that with this technique it is possible to simulate for a high number of generations the evolution of a population of individuals. Each individual is characterised by a small number of parameters, but each individual has its own evolutive story. So far it is possible to simulate the evolution of a population of some thousands specimens, for a high number of generations. The realistic aspect of the simulation is that each specimen is taken individually. In our opinion this instrument is very useful to simulate the evolution of the hybrids barrier during speciation. For this reason it is applied to a peculiar case of speciation, that of the Savi pine vole (Microtus savii) whose experimental data were recently investigated.
authors.affiliation: Centro Interdipartimentale per lo Studio dei Sistemi Complessi, Università di Pisa. a.cordelli@inwind.it
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cordelli
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cerrai
authors.forename: Lodovico
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Galleni
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003411:Arvicolinae / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012984:Software; D013045:Species Specificity; D014960:X Chromosome / Q000648:ultrastructure; D014998:Y Chromosome / Q000648:ultrastructure