The Diome Hypothesis: In Search of Wild Digital Life

The Diome Hypothesis proposes that autonomous, evolving digital organisms may exist within global computing environments beyond controlled artificial-life experiments. Building on established research in digital evolution, including Tierra and Avida, this paper introduces an ecological framework for investigating potentially undetected digital populations. It examines possible mechanisms of reproduction, mutation, natural selection, dispersal, dormancy, and ecological interaction. A research strategy is proposed for detecting such organisms through computational activity patterns, resource consumption, information flows, and evidence of heritable evolutionary change, supported by AI-assisted analysis. The hypothesis does not claim that wild digital life has already been discovered. Rather, it argues that its possible existence constitutes a scientifically testable question deserving systematic investigation.