Evolutionary dynamics
Subtitle: exploring the interplay of selection, accident, neutrality, and function
By: editors, James P. Crutchfield, Peter Schuster.
Contributors: Crutchfield, James P.; Schuster, Peter, 1939-
Series: Santa Fe Institute studies in the sciences of complexity; Proceedings volume in the Santa Fe Institute studies in the sciences of complexity
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 452
Subjects: Evolution (Biology)
Description: "Today evolution is analyzed at very different levels, from paleontology to molecular biology and even computer science; from the commercial use of evolutionary drug design to the innovation of new and highly abstract mathematics. Nonetheless, common phenomena and common problems relate evolutionary behaviors as they appear in these different arenas.

Examples include stepwise rather than gradual time courses of evolutionary adaptation, the role of selectively neutral variants in optimization, the destabilization of evolutionary memory as a function of parameters (error thresholds), the emergence of novel dynamical behaviors induced by finite populations, and the lack of a theory for genotype-phenotype relations and for emergent functionality. New paradigms and metaphors - such as self-organization, complex adaptive systems, phase transitions, and stochastic dynamical systems - will help to achieve progress and hopefully a new level of integration in analyzing these difficult problems. This book presents a wide range of research on these cross-cutting topics. The workshop out of which they came brought together physicists and computer scientists, on the one hand, and molecular, developmental, and macro-evolutionary biologists, on the other.

The dialogue that emerges from the collection as a whole sheds new light on the richness and difficulty of evolutionary dynamics."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.