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EFFECTS OF POPULATION SIZE AND MUTATION RATE ON THE EVOLUTION OF MUTATIONAL ROBUSTNESS
Author(s) -
Elena Santiago F.,
Wilke Claus O.,
Ofria Charles,
Lenski Richard E.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00064.x
Subject(s) - biology , robustness (evolution) , population size , natural selection , mutation rate , population , genetics , effective population size , evolutionary biology , selection (genetic algorithm) , gene , genetic variation , computer science , artificial intelligence , demography , sociology
It is often assumed that the efficiency of selection for mutational robustness would be proportional to mutation rate and population size, thus being inefficient in small populations. However, Krakauer and Plotkin (2002) hypothesized that selection in small populations would favor robustness mechanisms, such as redundancy, that mask the effect of deleterious mutations. In large populations, by contrast, selection is more effective at removing deleterious mutants and fitness would be improved by eliminating mechanisms that mask the effect of deleterious mutations and thus impede their removal. Here, we test whether these predictions are supported in experiments with evolving populations of digital organisms. Digital organisms are self‐replicating programs that inhabit a virtual world inside a computer. Like their organic counterparts, digital organisms mutate, compete, evolve, and adapt by natural selection to their environment. In this study, 160 populations evolved at different combinations of mutation rate and population size. After 10 4 generations, we measured the mutational robustness of the most abundant genotype in each population. Mutational robustness tended to increase with mutation rate and to decline with population size, although the dependence with population size was in part mediated by a negative relationship between fitness and robustness. These results are independent of whether genomes were constrained to their original length or allowed to change in size.