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by mannigfaltig 3156 days ago
> evolution of evolvability and then a seemingly unrelated subject: the evolution of robustness.

Isn't evolvability only about robustness? What other criteria would improve evolution? Mutations just happen, so the question is how well the phenotype can deal with these mutations. If it can incorporate mutations well, it can tunnel to different useful phenotypes and therefore is robust.

1 comments

Agree, but it’s not not obvious to most people. Robustness itself if a murky subject: are you robust to mutation, to the environment, genetic noise, genetic background? Also if you are too robust then you can’t evolve. What we want to say with evolvability is that we’re more predisposed positive selection.