In the example above we had populations of mental models as small as 10. The behaviour of small populations may be pathological from the point of view of an efficient search mechanism, but here we have different goals in using evolutionary algorithms. Also it is not always the case that the usual genetic operators are very efficient in such small populations. This is important as the mechanism chosen has to be credible for realistically small populations of mental models.
Much work needs to be done to understand the evolutionary dynamics of small populations.