Investigating ontogenetic space with developmental cell lineages

Development plays a significant role in biological evolution, and is likely to prove an effective route to overcoming the limitations of direct genotype-phenotype mappings in artificial evolution. Nonetheless, the relationship between development and evolution is complex and still poorly understood. One question of current interest concerns the possible role that developmental processes may play in orienting evolution. A first step towards exploring this issue from a theoretical perspective is understanding the structure of ontogenetic space: the space of possible genotype-phenotype mappings. Using a quantitative model of development that enables ontogenetic space to be characterised in terms of complexity, we show that ontogenetic landscapes have a characteristic structure that varies with genotypic properties.

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