Adaptation and Natural Selection

Adaptation without Natural Selection

How can a system become better adapted over time without natural selection? Although some argue for ‘organismic’ properties such as robustness and self-sustaining regulation in non-evolved systems [1,5,11], others insist that natural selection is the only source of true adaptation [3]. We suggest that understanding how adaptation can occur without natural selection remains a fundamental open qu...

Channel Input Adaptation via Natural Type Selection

For the model of communication through a discrete memoryless channel using i.i.d. random block codes, where the channel is changing slowly from block to block, we propose a stochastic algorithm for adaptation of the generating distribution of the code in the process of continuous reliable communication. The purpose of the algorithm is to match the generating distribution Q(x) to the changing ch...

Natural selection and the genetics of adaptation in threespine stickleback.

Growing knowledge of the molecular basis of adaptation in wild populations is expanding the study of natural selection. We summarize ongoing efforts to infer three aspects of natural selection--mechanism, form and history--from the genetics of adaptive evolution in threespine stickleback that colonized freshwater after the last ice age. We tested a mechanism of selection for reduced bony armour...

Studying the Genetics of Behavior & Evolution by Adaptation & Natural Selection

Natural Language and Natural Selection

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every ten...