Regressive Biological Evolution due to Environmental Change
✍ Scribed by DANIEL J. LACKS
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 173 KB
- Volume
- 209
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5193
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✦ Synopsis
Simulation results are presented which suggest that regressive evolution (i.e., evolution to a less adapted state) often occurs in response to environmental change, by a process analogous to the stress-induced reversal of aging in glassy materials. The key to this process is the stress-induced disappearance of fitness optima that lead to irreversible changes in the location of a population in genotype space. Even though the population may always evolve to higher fitness states, this irreversible process will often act to bring an initially well-adapted system to a less adapted state upon a return to initial conditions.