In a recent publication (Bergman et al., 1995) we used a diploid version of the NK model of fitness landscapes (Kauffman and Levin, 1987; Kaufman, 1989) to investigate properties of Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution (reviewed in Wright, 1977). The NK model is a relatively simple way to...

Learning is frequently proposed as a mechanism that enables an individual to adapt to changes in the environment during its lifetime (Levins, 1968; Stephens, 1991). These studies generally take as their point of departure the Òabsolute fixity argument.Ó That is, in an absolutely fixed environment,...

Crossover events along chromosomes do not occur independently, but influence the probably of other nearby events. The most common interaction between nearby crossover events is inhibitory:\enskip a crossover event tends to reduce the probability of other such events nearby, and this is called...

Individual behavioral strategies that use conditional probabiltites for future environments and information about past environments are studied. The environments are random and Markovian. The individual uses the information available to it to prepare for the next environmental state in order to...

Wright first introduced the idea that random genetic drift and classical mass-action selection might combine in such a way as to allow populations to find the highest peak in complicated adaptive surfaces. His theory assumes large, but structured populations, in which mating is spatially local....

In population genetic theory, most analytical and numerical studies of the evolution of recombination have focused on diploid genetics. In studies of the foundations and applications of genetic algorithms (GA's), however, the bit-strings are usually treated as haploid genotypes. This paper...