Evolution of Biological Complexity
Biological Physics
2016-09-08 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Computational Complexity
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Populations and Evolution
Abstract
In order to make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show that because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural ``Maxwell Demon'', within a fixed environment genomic complexity is forced to increase.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0005074,
title = {Evolution of Biological Complexity},
author = {Christoph Adami and Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0005074},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
LaTeX 19 pages, incl. 4 figs