It took Tom Ray two years to analyze what happened in the first run of Tierra. A rich ecology of creatures appeared, but he hopes for more in the future.
The ultimate goal would be the apparition of a virtual
"Cambrian explosion of diversity".
The "Cambrian explosion of diversity" occurred 600 million years
ago, when the first multi-celled creatures appeared on Earth. It took a
long time for nature to get there: nearly three billion years. But once
this stage was reached, the complexity of life increased exponentially
in a short time, finally creating life-forms with nervous systems capable
of coordinating sophisticated behavior.
"Evolution of complexity occurs in the context of an ecological community of interacting evolving species. Such communities need large complex spaces to exist. A large and complex environment consisting of partially isolated habitats differing and occasionally changing in environmental conditions would be the most conductive to a rapid increase in diversity and complexity.
These are the considerations that lead to the suggestion of the creation of a large and complex ecological reserve for digital organisms. Due to its size, topological complexity, and dynamically changing form and condition, the global network of computers is the ideal habitat for the evolution of complex digital organisms" ([9]).
This global network of computers is, as you might have guessed, the Internet.