Self-Replicating Neural Cellular Automata: Quantifying Emergent Phenotypic and Genotypic Diversity in an OpenEnded Substrate

arXiv:2609.19902 · q-bio.PE, cs.LG, cs.NE · Submitted 2026-09-17 · Read on arXiv

q-bio.PE, cs.LG, cs.NE

Submitted: 2026-09-17

Updated: 2026-09-17

Project page: https://s4nyam.github.io/sonca

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

Cellular Automata — 21× in this paper
Genotypic Diversity — 15× in this paper
alpha — 8× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Clustering — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Phenotypic Diversity — 6× in this paper
Robustness — 5× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
Cell-Local-Organization Global Variance — 4× in this paper
Genotypic Hash Colouring — 4× in this paper
Cellular-Type Frequency Plot — 3× in this paper
Global Entropy Plot — 3× in this paper
Gross-Cell Variance Plot — 3× in this paper
Adaptation — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Random-Weight-Selection Plot — 2× in this paper
Computational Biology — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Online Adaptation — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
Provenance — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

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