Evolving generalists in switching rugged landscapes
Fig 4
Accessibility of generalists under environmental cycling.
(A) The fraction of genotypes that can reach a generalist via an adaptive walk. (B) The ratio of the total basin size of fit generalists (within the top 30% of maximum fitness) to that of all generalists. Both heatmaps are obtained by averaging over 1000 pairs of landscapes at each combination of np and K. In both diagrams, the gray area corresponds to phase I in which all fitness peaks are specific to one environment; in this no-generalist phase, landscape switching leads to oscillations (panel B, upper inset) or limit cycles (lower inset) among specialists. The colored region represents phase II, where generalists act like hubs into which evolutionary trajectories enclosed by linked basins converge, following multiple landscape switches.