Model of Interaction between Learning and Evolution

TL;DR

This paper presents a model exploring how learning influences evolution, demonstrating mechanisms like genetic assimilation, the hiding effect, and how learning load can accelerate evolutionary processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model analyzing the interaction between learning and evolution, including effects like genetic assimilation and learning load impact.

Findings

Genetic assimilation causes phenotypes and genotypes to move towards the optimum.

Strong learning can inhibit evolutionary search (hiding effect).

Learning load can significantly accelerate evolution.

Abstract

The model of interaction between learning and evolutionary optimization is designed and investigated. The evolving population of modeled organisms is considered. The mechanism of the genetic assimilation of the acquired features during a number of generations of Darwinian evolution is studied. It is shown that the genetic assimilation takes place as follows: phenotypes of modeled organisms move towards the optimum at learning; then the selection takes place; genotypes of selected organisms also move towards the optimum. The hiding effect is also studied; this effect means that strong learning can inhibit the evolutionary search for the optimal genotype. The mechanism of influence of the learning load on the interaction between learning and evolution is analyzed. It is shown that the learning load can lead to a significant acceleration of evolution.