Evolutionary rates of information gain and decay in fluctuating environments

TL;DR

This paper investigates how information transfer in evolving populations is affected by fluctuating environments, revealing a crossover point where environmental variability either enhances or inhibits information retention.

Contribution

It introduces an information-theoretic framework to analyze the dynamics of information gain and decay in fluctuating environments, predicting a crossover in evolutionary behavior.

Findings

Identification of a crossover regime influenced by environmental fluctuations

Prediction of conditions where fluctuations improve information capture

Analysis of timescale effects on information retention

Abstract

In this paper, we wish to investigate the dynamics of information transfer in evolutionary dynamics. We use information theoretic tools to track how much information an evolving population has obtained and managed to retain about different environments that it is exposed to. By understanding the dynamics of information gain and loss in a static environment, we predict how that same evolutionary system would behave when the environment is fluctuating. Specifically, we anticipate a cross-over between the regime in which fluctuations improve the ability of the evolutionary system to capture environmental information and the regime in which the fluctuations inhibit it, governed by a cross-over in the timescales of information gain and decay.