10 research outputs found
The evolution of sex through the Baldwin effect
This paper suggests that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. With this explanation for the basic cycle, the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution tuning the amount and frequency of learning experienced by an organism. Using the well-known NK model of fitness landscapes it is shown that varying landscape ruggedness varies the benefit of the haploid-diploid cycle, whether based upon endomitosis or syngamy. The utility of mechanisms such as pre-meiotic doubling and recombination during the cycle are also shown to vary with landscape ruggedness. This view is suggested as underpinning, rather than contradicting, many existing explanations for sex
Meta-Learning by the Baldwin Effect
The scope of the Baldwin effect was recently called into question by two
papers that closely examined the seminal work of Hinton and Nowlan. To this
date there has been no demonstration of its necessity in empirically
challenging tasks. Here we show that the Baldwin effect is capable of evolving
few-shot supervised and reinforcement learning mechanisms, by shaping the
hyperparameters and the initial parameters of deep learning algorithms.
Furthermore it can genetically accommodate strong learning biases on the same
set of problems as a recent machine learning algorithm called MAML "Model
Agnostic Meta-Learning" which uses second-order gradients instead of evolution
to learn a set of reference parameters (initial weights) that can allow rapid
adaptation to tasks sampled from a distribution. Whilst in simple cases MAML is
more data efficient than the Baldwin effect, the Baldwin effect is more general
in that it does not require gradients to be backpropagated to the reference
parameters or hyperparameters, and permits effectively any number of gradient
updates in the inner loop. The Baldwin effect learns strong learning dependent
biases, rather than purely genetically accommodating fixed behaviours in a
learning independent manner
Evolving Diploid Boolean and Multi-Valued Gene Networks
Boolean networks have been widely used to explore aspects of gene regulation,
traditionally with a single network. A modified form of the model to explore
the effects of increasing the number of gene states has also recently been
introduced. In this paper, these discrete dynamical networks are evolved as
diploids within rugged fitness landscapes to explore their behaviour. Results
suggest the general properties of haploid networks in similar circumstances
remain for diploids. The previously proposed inherent fitness landscape
smoothing properties of eukaryotic sex are shown to be exhibited in these
dynamical systems, as is their propensity to change in size based upon the
characteristics of the network and fitness landscape.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2302.0169
On the emergence of intersexual selection: Arbitrary trait preference improves female-male coevolution
Sexual selection is a fundamental aspect of evolution for all eukaryotic organisms with mating types. This article suggests intersexual selection is best viewed as a mechanism with which to compensate for the unavoidable dynamics of coevolution between sexes that emerge with isogamy. Using the NKCS model it is shown by varying fitness landscape size, ruggedness, and connectedness, how a purely arbitrary trait preference sexual selection mechanism proves beneficial with high dependence between the sexes. This is found to be the case whether one or both sexes exploit such intersexual selection