  Transport networks play a key role across four realms of eukaryotic life:
slime molds, fungi, plants, and animals. In addition to the developmental
algorithms that build them, many also employ adaptive strategies to respond to
stimuli, damage, and other environmental changes. We model these adapting
network architectures using a generic dynamical system on weighted graphs and
find in simulation that these networks ultimately develop a hierarchical
organization of the final weighted architecture accompanied by the formation of
a system-spanning backbone. In addition, we find that the long term
equilibration dynamics exhibit glassy behavior characterized by long periods of
slow changes punctuated by bursts of reorganization events.
