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AnonTechie writes:

We can simulate the climate and we can even simulate babies. Now, we can simulate life on Earth, too the vast and complex interactions of the living organisms on our planet.

Named Madingley, after the village in Cambridgeshire, UK, where the idea was dreamed up, it's a mathematical model that could help us predict the future. It could tell us what would happen if all the bees disappeared, the difference it would make if pandas died out, and what the world might have looked like if humans had never invented intensive farming. The work also suggests that the basic structures of all ecosystems can be predicted using a small number of universal ecological principles.