Basic design pattern for individual based modeling

Dear stackoverflow community,

im working as a researcher at for the environmental sciences department at a university. Currently im developing individual-based-models (which are kinda similar to agent-based-models) using C#. Basically i have alot of individuals that run through processes like Eating(), Reproducing(), Ageing(), etc...

The larger and more complex those models get, its really hard keeping track of them, although i've tried my best doing it in a object-oriented way.

So my Question is:

Are there any basic design pattern for individual based modeling (object oriented) ?

I've heard of some books about system theory and i have seen some very clever implementations of models. For example one model has for each containing modules only the basic methods:

Input()
Output()
Update()
ConnectTo()
Dispose()
...

and puts all those Methods to an abstract class called Submodel().

Is there any literature about that. ? I googled alot but couldnt find anything usefull.

Thanks a lot!

Phillip

PS: Im more the mathematician but had some courses about c# and object oriented programming.