Despite Darwin’s pluralistic view that “natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification” (Darwin, 1872) (quoted in (Lewontin and Gould, 1979)), subsequent major developments in evolutionary biology such as the theories of natural selection, the modern synthesis, and molecular neo-darwinism have biased scientific explanations of evolution towards gene-centric the...

In this paper an evolutionary method consisting of encoding a set of local adaptation rules that synapses obey while a robot freely moves in the environment is compared to standard evolution of fixed-weight control networks. The results show that evolutionary adaptive controllers can adapt online without additional evolutionary training to strong environmental changes where instead the performa...

Introduction Rapid predicted worldwide growth in demand for animal products to 2020—the so-called “next food revolution” in animal agriculture—portends complex interactions among people, biological and geophysical resources, and economic objectives. A restructuring of global food demands is expected: in contrast to current patterns, most (>60%) global production of meat and milk will be consume...