Variation and Selection are the two core processes of Darwinian Evolution. Yet, both are directly regulated by many processes that are themselves products of evolution (e.g. DNA repair, mutator genes, transposable elements, horizontal transfer, stochasticity of gene expression, sex, network modularity, niche construction…). This results in the ability of evolution to self-modify its operators, hence its dynamics. We call this process “Evolution of Evolution” or EvoEvo. Different EvoEvo strategies have been proposed in the literature, including regulation of variability, robustness/evolvability strategies, bet-hedging… However, most of these strategies are poorly characterized and the conditions under which they evolve as well as their consequences are generally unknown.
The aim of the EvoEvo workshop is to seek for a unified theory of Evolution of Evolution by studying its biological mechanisms, evolutionary consequences and possible applications to bioinspired computation. The workshop will take place as a satellite workshop of ECAL 2015: the 13th European Conference on Artificial Life (http://ecal2015.alife.org), University of York, York, UK. The EvoEvo workshop is an initiative of the EvoEvo consortium funded by the FP7 EU-FET grant EvoEvo (ICT-610427).
The EvoEvo workshop will take place on Friday 24th July (see here for more details).
10:00-10:15 | Welcome + introduction (G. Beslon) – Slides |
10:15-11:00 | The Role of Gene Origin in the Evolution of Evolvability (L. Altenberg, invited speaker) – Slides |
11:00-11:20 | Coffee break |
11:20-11:35 | In vivo and in silico evolution experiments highlight signatures of “evolution of evolution” (O. Lamrabet, D. Schneider, T. Hindré) – Extended Abstract |
11:35-11:50 | Quantitative Changes Underlie Robustness and Evolvability in an Experimentally Tractable Gene Network (A. Crombach, K. Wotton, E. Jimenez-Guri, J. Jaeger) |
11:50-12:15 | Towards an Integrated Evolutionary Model to Study Evolution of Evolution (C. Rocabert, C. Knibbe, G. Beslon) – Article |
12:15-12:40 | Experiments with cascading design (B. Kovitz) – Article – Slides |
12:40-12:55 | Properties of Compensatory Mutation in Artificial Gene Regulatory Networks (Y. Wang, J. J. Bryson, N. K. Priest) – Extended Abstract |
13:00-14:00 | Lunch |
14:00-14:45 | Tools and techniques to understand the evolutionary origins of modularity (J-B. Mouret, invited speaker) – Abstract |
14:45-15:10 | Endless evolutionary paths to Virtual Microbes (T. Cuypers, P. Hogeweg) – Article – Slides |
15:10-15:25 | Requirements for Open Ended Evolution in Natural and Artificial Systems (T. Taylor) – Extended abstract |
15:25-15:40 | Subspace Clustering for all Seasons (S. Peignier, C. Rigotti, G. Beslon) – Extended abstract |
15:40 | Closure and tea break |