How evolution learns to generalise: Using the principles of learning theory to understand the evolution of developmental organisation
Fig 2
Conditions that facilitate generalised phenotypic distributions.
Potential phenotypic distributions induced by the evolved developmental process under 1) different time-scales of environmental switching, 2) environmental noise (κ = 35 × 10−4) and 3) direct selection pressure for weak (λ = 38) and sparse connectivity (λ = 0.22). The organisms were exposed to three selective environments (a) from the general class (i). Developmental memorisation of past phenotypic targets clearly depends on the time-scale of environmental change. Noisy environments and parsimony pressures enhance the generalisation ability of development predisposing the production of previously unseen targets from the class. The size of the insect-like creatures describes relative frequencies and indicates the propensity of development to express the respective phenotype (phenotypes with frequency less than 0.01 were ignored). Note that the initial developmental structure represented all possible phenotypic patterns equally (here 212 possible phenotypes).