Evolution of Complexity

The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of higher complexities. However, the mechanisms behind the complexification and its relation to evolution are not well understood. Moreover complexification can be used to mean different things in different contexts. For example, complexification has been interpreted as a process of diversification between evolving units [2] or as a scaling process related to the idea of transitions between different levels of complexity [7]. Understanding the difference or overlap between the mechanisms involved in both situations is mandatory to create acceptable synthetic models of the process, as is required in Artificial Life research. Concretely, many open questions related to the evolution of complexity can be asked. Some were proposed in the call for papers, of which some are addressed in this issue: