Related papers: Built to evolve
Metabolism and evolution are closely connected: if a mutation incurs extra energetic costs for an organism, there is a baseline selective disadvantage that may or may not be compensated for by other adaptive effects. A long-standing, but to…
In the spirit of the many recent simple models of evolution inspired by statistical physics, we put forward a simple model of the evolution of such models. Like its objects of study, it is (one supposes) in principle testable and capable of…
It has recently been suggested that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. Thereafter the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution tuning the amount and…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection does not predict long-term progress or advancement, nor does it provide a useful way to define or understand these concepts. Nevertheless, the history of life is marked by major trends that…
Biological evolution is realised through the same mechanisms of birth and death that underlie change in population density. The deep interdependence between ecology and evolution is well-established, and recent models focus on integrating…
Although different learning systems are coordinated to afford complex behavior, little is known about how this occurs. This article describes a theoretical framework that specifies how complex behaviors that might be thought to require…
Most living systems rely on double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) to store their genetic information and perpetuate themselves. This biological information has been considered the main target of evolution. However, here we show that symmetries and…
A full accounting of biological robustness remains elusive; both in terms of the mechanisms by which robustness is achieved and the forces that have caused robustness to grow over evolutionary time. Although its importance to topics such as…
The interaction networks of biological systems are known to take on several non-random structural properties, some of which are believed to positively influence system robustness. Researchers are only starting to understand how these…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
Diversity is a fundamental feature of ecosystems, even when the concept of ecosystem is extended to sociology or economics. Diversity can be intended as the count of different items, animals, or, more generally, interactions. There are two…
The transformation of organic molecules into the simplest self-replicating living system,a microorganism, is accomplished from a unique event or rare events that occurred early in the Universe. The subsequent dispersal on cosmic scales and…
This paper presents the thesis that all learning agents of finite information size are limited by their informational structure in what goals they can efficiently learn to achieve in a complex environment. Evolutionary change is critical…
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…
Throughout the evolution of biological species on Earth, cells and organs have developed many complex structures and processes to ensure their interactions with individual chemical molecules (small and macromolecular) and nanoscale objects…
Combinatorial evolution - the creation of new things through the combination of existing things - can be a powerful way to evolve rather than design technical objects such as electronic circuits. Intriguingly, this seems to be an ongoing…
The process of evolutionary emergence of purposeful adaptive behavior is investigated by means of computer simulations. The model proposed implies that there is an evolving population of simple agents, which have two natural needs: energy…
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…