Related papers: Is information a selectable trait?
In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and…
The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…
In recent years, with the rapid growth of Internet data, the number and types of scientific and technological resources are also rapidly expanding. However, the increase in the number and category of information data will also increase the…
While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimisation, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. We argue that under…
The quest to comprehend the origins of intelligence raises intriguing questions about the evolution of learning abilities in natural systems. Why do living organisms possess an inherent drive to acquire knowledge of the unknown? Is this…
The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…
We study the evolution of the network properties of a populated network embedded in a genotype space characterised by either a low or a high number of potential links, with particular emphasis on the connectivity and clustering. Evolution…
Time evolution of number of species (genera, families, and others), population of them, and size distribution of present ones and life times are studied in terms of a new model, where population of each genetic taxon increases by a (random)…
A common assumption in evolutionary thought is that adaptation drives an increase in biological complexity. However, the rules governing evolution of complexity appear more nuanced. Evolution is deeply connected to learning, where…
Consider a population of organisms that harvest free energy from their environment to reproduce. This paper shows that if the organisms' reproductive rates are proportional to the amount of physical free energy that they can convert into…
We model a social-encounter network where linked nodes match for reproduction in a manner depending probabilistically on each node`s attractiveness. The developed model reveals that increasing either the network`s mean degree or the…
We present a model that investigates preference evolution with endogenous matching. In the short run, individuals' subjective preferences influence partner selection and behavior in strategic interactions, which affect their material…
Evolvability is the capacity to evolve. This paper introduces a simple computational model of evolvability and demonstrates that, under certain conditions, evolvability can increase indefinitely, even when there is no direct selection for…
Using information theory, we propose an estimation method for traits parameters in a Darwinian evolution model for species with on trait or multiple traits. We use the Fisher's information to obtain the errors on the estimation for one…
How individuals adapt their behavior in cultural evolution remains elusive. Theoretical studies have shown that the update rules chosen to model individual decision making can dramatically modify the evolutionary outcome of the population…
Different evolutionary models are known to make disparate predictions for the success of an invading mutant in some situations. For example, some evolutionary mechanics lead to amplification of selection in structured populations, while…
We illustrate in terms familiar to modern day science students that: (i) an uncertainty slope mechanism underlies the usefulness of temperature via its reciprocal, which is incidentally around 42 [nats/eV] at the freezing point of water;…
Evolutionary dynamics and patterns of molecular evolution are strongly influenced by selection on linked regions of the genome, but our quantitative understanding of these effects remains incomplete. Recent work has focused on predicting…
Building on the view of machine learning as search, we demonstrate the necessity of bias in learning, quantifying the role of bias (measured relative to a collection of possible datasets, or more generally, information resources) in…
Predicting the adaptation of populations to a changing environment is crucial to assess the impact of human activities on biodiversity. Many theoretical studies have tackled this issue by modeling the evolution of quantitative traits…