Contributed talk in Evolution 1, July 30, 2019, 3 p.m. in room USB.2.022

Evolutionary rates of information gain and decay in fluctuating environments

Nicholas Guttenberg

watch Publication By representing a distribution of possible environments as a random variable, we measure the dynamics of the mutual information between a population of simulated organisms and their environment. We observe that the dynamics of the mutual information during adaptation to a particular environment follow a simple form, which suggests that the behavior of the population can be considered with respect to the rate at which information is being gained and the rate at which information is being lost. In general, we observe that these characteristic time-scales are different, but may become equal at certain parameter values. Based on this picture, we predict that in fluctuating environments there should be a corresponding cross-over point between where fluctuations enhance evolution's capacity to capture environmental information and where they inhibit it.