The paper I wrote together with Matthew Egbert and Ezequiel Di Paolo got accepted and will be soon published at the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Life. It is entitled Behavioral Metabolution: Metabolism Based Behavior Enables New Forms of Adaptation and Evolution and it addresses, the evolutionary scale interaction between metabolism and behavior, using a simulation of a bacteria-like moving protocell whose behavioral architecture is constituted by metabolism itself.
We provide two proofs of concept of how metabolism can guide behavior, and behavior can guide metabolism to bootstrap a process of push-me-pull-you positive feedback between the evolution of metabolism and that of behavior. Implications for early protocellular evolutionary scenarios are discussed.
Xabier E. Barandiaran 