Neutrality and the Evolvability of Boolean Function
Landscape
Genetic Programming, Proceedings of EuroGP'2001, volume 2038 of LNCS, page 204--217. Lake Como, Italy, Springer-Verlag, (18-20 April 2001)Abstract
This work is a study of neutrality in the context of
Evolutionary Computation systems. In particular, we
introduce the use of explicit neutrality with an
integer string coding scheme to allow neutrality to be
measured during evolution. We tested this method on a
Boolean benchmark problem. The experimental results
indicate that there is a positive relationship between
neutrality and evolvability: neutrality improves
evolvability. We also identify four characteristics of
adaptive/neutral mutations that are associated with
high evolvability. They may be the ingredients in
designing effective Evolutionary Computation systems
for the Boolean class problem.
