This model was designed to explore the emergent heterogeneity in a population of generic consumers, who forage for energy resources in a network. In the original model, the networks were soil macropore networks generated from images taken of soil profiles.

The agents (consumers) are random walkers who navigate from resource node to resource node, moving one step per tick. At each timestep, they require a certain amount of energy (basal metabolism), plus energy required for movement (active metabolism), if they are moving. Consumers can also choose to remain on a resource node if it has enough energy for them to do so. If a consumer has more than twice their spawn energy requirement, they spawn a new consumer identical to themselves, who inherits half of the parent’s energy reserves. Consumers who run out of energy become inactive (die).