Using Embryonic Stages to increase the evolvability of development

Indirect encoding methods are aimed at the reduction of the combinatorial explosion of search spaces, therefore increasing the evolvability of large phenotypes. These so called Artificial Embryogeny systems have so far shown increased scalability for problems involving solutions of low complexity. This leaves open the more general question about the evolvability of complex phenotypes. In this paper, we introduce a novel method of cellular growth regulated by a developmental program. Genotypes are selected for their ability to develop organisms of specific shape and cell types. Results show that the use of Embryonic Stages, which involves the incremental addition of growth programs, displays positive effects on the evolvability of development.

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