http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2011/08/14#evolution-of-complexity <P>That is, how does <a href="evolution.html">biological evolution</a> affect the <a href="complexity.html">complexity</a> of organisms? (Or assemblages of organisms, like ecologies?) Obviously, this is difficult to study well without a widely agreed-upon and biologically-appropriate <a href="complexity-measure.html">complexity measure</a>... <P>How different is "the evolution of complexity" from, e.g., "the evolution of size"? (Bonner, for one, suggests they are linked.) <P>See also: <a href="development-bio.html">Developmental Biology</a> <ul>Recommended: <li><a href="j-t-bonner.html">John Tyler Bonner</a>, <cite>On the Evolution of Complexity, by Means of Natural Selection</cite> [<A HREF="../reviews/evolution-of-complexity/">Review</A>] <li>T. H. Frazzetta, <cite>Complex Adaptations in Evolving Populations</cite> <li>Carlos Gershenson, Tom Lenaerts, "Evolution of Complexity", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3784">arxiv:0710.3784</a> [Introduction to the special issue of <citE>Artificial Life</citE> edited by Carlos and Tom] <li><a href="http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/">Stuart Kauffman</a>, <cite>The Origins of Order</cite> [Interesting, but the writing is confused. Favors intrinsic trends towards complexity, self-organization and "<a href="edge-of-chaos.html">the edge of chaos</a>." I am <em>much</em> more skeptical of some, but by no means all, of Kauffman's later work.] <li><a href="http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~txm/">Thomas Miconi</a>, "Complexity and Evolution: The Double-Edged Sword", <citE>Artificial Life</citE> (forthcoming) [<a href="http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~txm/complexfinal.pdf">PDF</a>] </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Raffaele Calabretta, "Duplication of modules facilitates the evolution of functional specialization," <cite>Artificial Life</cite> <strong>6</strong> (2000): 69--84 [<a href="http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/12/96/">online</a>] <li>Max Shpak, Peter Stadler, Gunter Wagner and Lee Altenberg, "Simon-Ando Decomposability and Fitness Landscapes", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.PE/0403030">q-bio.PE/0403030</a> <li>Orkun S. Soyer and Sebastian Bonhoeffer, "Evolution of complexity in signaling pathways", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0604449103"><cite>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</cite> (USA) <strong>103</strong> (2006): 16337--16342</a> <li>Peter D. Turney, "A Simple Model of Unbounded Evolutionary Versatility as a Largest-Scale Trend in Organismal Evolution", <cite>Artificial Life</cite> <strong>6</strong> (2000): 109--128 = <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.NE/0212021">arxiv:cs.NE/0212021</a> [Thanks to Dr. Turney for pointing me to this paper] <li>Gunter P. Wagner, Jane P. Kenney-Hunt, Mihaela Pavlicev, Joel R. Peck, David Waxman and James M. Cheverud, "Pleiotropic scaling of gene effects and the 'cost of complexity'", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature06756"><cite>Nature</cite> <strong>452</strong> (2008): 470--472</a> </ul>