Yes, his work contains interesting ideas. I especially like the appealing idea of correlating interdependencies in the genotype with the ruggedness of fitness landscapes, although it is probably to simple. Are interdependencies between modules in the genotypes a reason why small changes in the genotype could have large effects on reproduction rates ? It seems plausible, but hard to prove.
The fitness function depends in general on the success of the phenotype (reproduction rates), and the relationship between genotype and phenotype is very complex and non-linear. The fitness of a phenotype is easy to determine, but hard to calculate from the genotype. This is similar to NP-complete problems: the quality of a solution is easy to verify, but the solution itself is hard to calculate. Therefore it is probably hard to say how rugged the fitness landscape is dependent on changes in the genotype, because the fitness is an unpredictable emergent property of the whole system, including the environment. One recent concept in this area seems to be "Epistasis" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistasis Epistasis and Shapes of Fitness Landscapes http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.PE/0603034 -J. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
