We describe the design and experiments performed with a computing simulation tool representing a synthetic ecosystem with three components (producers, herbivores and predators). This model is a cellular automata, but can be best defined as an individual-based model (IBM), where each agent exhibits its own singularity responding to a series of invariable labels that in an informal way can be named "genes", while other variable labels define their internal status. As an "opaque thought experiment" the model was devoted to the study of self-organization, stated as the emergence and conservation of a spontaneous order and the analysis of the factors that could destabilize this structure. Whereas the simulator count on a limited number of codified short range interactions, its evolution exhibits a long range uncodified emergent effects that are suggestive of the presence of underlying processes of self-organization.
