Related papers: There's plenty of time for evolution
The theory of evolution by natural selection cannot be used to evaluate the truth value of the following proposition: Through evolution, there exists at least one species that can adapt to any one given environment. To address this issue,…
Open-ended evolutionary dynamics remains an elusive goal for artificial evolutionary systems. Many ideas exist in the biological literature beyond the basic Darwinian requirements of variation, differential reproduction and inheritance. I…
We explore the connection between evolution and large-deviation theory. To do so, we study evolutionary dynamics in which individuals experience mutations, reproduction, and selection using variants of the Moran model. We show that, in the…
The Darwinian paradigm of biological evolution is based on the separability of the variation and selection processes. As a result, the population thinking had always been an integral part of the Darwinian approach. I propose an alternative…
We consider the evolution of a population of fixed size with no selection. The number of generations $G$ to reach the first common ancestor evolves in time. This evolution can be described by a simple Markov process which allows one to…
In a letter published in Molecular Biology Evolution [10], Chen and Zhang argue that the variation of the mutation rate along the Escherichia coli genome that we recently reported [3] cannot be evolutionarily optimised. To support this…
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…
Over time, a population acquires neutral genetic substitutions as a consequence of random drift. A famous result in population genetics asserts that the rate, $K$, at which these substitutions accumulate in the population coincides with the…
Any process in which competing solutions replicate with errors and numbers of their copies depend on their respective fitnesses is the evolutionary optimization process. As during carcinogenesis mutated genomes replicate according to their…
To learn about the past from a sample of genomic sequences, one needs to understand how evolutionary processes shape genetic diversity. Most population genetic inference is based on frameworks assuming adaptive evolution is rare. But if…
Evolutionary branching is analysed in a stochastic, individual-based population model under mutation and selection. In such models, the common assumption is that individual reproduction and life career are characterised by values of a…
Recently, it has been proven that evolutionary algorithms produce good results for a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems. Some of the considered problems are tackled by evolutionary algorithms that use a representation which…
Darwinian evolution requires (i) heritable records, (ii) repeatable copying with variation, and (iii) routine irreversibility. Categorical quantum mechanics (CQM) makes precise why ``copy'' and ``delete'' are not generic quantum operations:…
Word order evolution has been hypothesized to be constrained by a word order permutation ring: transitions involving orders that are closer in the permutation ring are more likely. The hypothesis can be seen as a particular case of…
Information is a key concept in evolutionary biology. Information is stored in biological organism's genomes, and used to generate the organism as well as to maintain and control it. Information is also "that which evolves". When a…
Natural selection successfully explains how organisms accumulate adaptive change despite that traits acquired over a lifetime are eliminated at the end of each generation. However, in some domains that exhibit cumulative, adaptive change --…
Microbial populations adapt to their environment by acquiring advantageous mutations, but in the early twentieth century, questions about how these organisms acquire mutations arose. The experiment of Salvador Luria and Max Delbr\"uck that…
Neural codes appear efficient. Naturally, neuroscientists contend that an efficient process is responsible for generating efficient codes. They argue that natural selection is the efficient process that generates those codes. Although…
We consider a second order linear evolution equation with a dissipative term multiplied by a time-dependent coefficient. Our aim is to design the coefficient in such a way that all solutions decay in time as fast as possible. We discover…
If evolution can be connected to the principle of least action, and if it is depicted in evolution space versus time then it corresponds to the direction of ultimate causation. As an organism evolves and follows a path of proximate…