MABE (Modular Agent Based Evolver): A framework for digital evolution research.

A great deal of effort in digital evolution research is invested in developing experimental tools. Because each experiment is different and because the emphasis is on generating results, the tools that are developed are usually not designed to be extendable or multipurpose. Here we present MABE, a modular and reconfigurable digital evolution research tool designed to minimize the time from hypotheses generation to hypotheses testing. MABE provides an accessible framework which seeks to increase collaborations and to facilitate reuse by implementing only features that are common to most experiments, while leaving experimentally dependent details up to the user. MABE was initially released in August 2016 and has since then been used to ask questions related to Evolution, Sexual Selection, Psychology, Cognition, Neuroscience, Cooperation, Spatial Navigation and Computer Science.