Related papers: Is information a selectable trait?
The nature and source of evolutionary trends in complexity is difficult to assess from the fossil record, and the driven vs. passive nature of such trends has been debated for decades. There are also questions about how effectively…
This paper explores the idea that information is an essential and distinctive feature of living systems. Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to respond to…
We study the evolution of preferences in multi-population settings that allow matches across distinct populations. Each individual has subjective preferences over potential outcomes, and chooses a best response based on his preferences and…
The problem of the directionality of genome evolution is studied from the information-theoretic view. We propose that the function-coding information quantity of a genome always grows in the course of evolution through sequence duplication,…
Mutations in a microbial population can increase the frequency of a genotype not only by increasing its exponential growth rate, but also by decreasing its lag time or adjusting the yield (resource efficiency). The contribution of multiple…
The tendency of repeating past choices more often than expected from the history of outcomes has been repeatedly empirically observed in reinforcement learning experiments. It can be explained by at least two computational processes:…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
Evolution and learning are two of the fundamental mechanisms by which life adapts in order to survive and to transcend limitations. These biological phenomena inspired successful computational methods such as evolutionary algorithms and…
Stronger selection implies faster evolution---that is, the greater the force, the faster the change. This apparently self-evident proposition, however, is derived under the assumption that genetic variation within a population is primarily…
A population of individuals with the same genes can present heterogeneous traits (phenotypes). The prevalence of this heterogeneity can be explained as a bet-hedging strategy that improves the population proliferation rate (fitness) in…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
One of the hallmarks of biological organisms is their ability to integrate disparate information sources to optimize their behavior in complex environments. How this capability can be quantified and related to the functional complexity of…
Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a…
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection…
Evolution is a fundamental process that shapes the biological world we inhabit, and reinforcement learning is a powerful tool used in artificial intelligence to develop intelligent agents that learn from their environment. In recent years,…
We investigate a selection-mutation model for the dynamics of technological innovation,a special case of reaction-diffusion equations. Although mutations are assumed to increase the variety of technologies, not their average success…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…
On average men are taller and more muscular than women, which confers on them advantages related to female choice and during physical competition with other men. Sexual size dimorphisms such as these come with vulnerabilities due to higher…
We represent a process of learning by using bit strings, where 1-bits represent the knowledge acquired by individuals. Two ways of learning are considered: individual learning by trial-and-error; and social learning by copying knowledge…
The long-term growth rate of populations in varying environments quantifies the evolutionary value of processing the information that biological individuals inherit from their ancestors and acquire from their environment. Previous models…