Beyond the Hypercube: Evolutionary Accessibility of Fitness Landscapes with Realistic Mutational Networks
Fig 3
Indirect mutations dominate evolutionary trajectories for fitness landscapes with K > 2.
(a) Average number of mutational steps (pathway length) along accessible pathway for a fixed length of genotype L. Fractions of forward, distance-neutral, and backward mutations are indicated by coloured areas between the curves, for example the fraction of forward mutations corresponds to the distance between the red and the gray curve. (b) Average length of accessible pathway for a fixed number of genotypes N. (c) Average length of accessible pathway for a fixed number of coding units K (circles) with straight lines fitted to the data (lines). Note that the fraction of shortest pathways (with only forward mutations) among all pathways quickly decreases (cf. S3 Fig).