Eur. Phys. J. B 67, 259-267 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00032-8

Evolution of a population of random Boolean networks

Institut für Festkörperphysik, TU Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 6, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany

Corresponding author: ^a tamara@fkp.tu-darmstadt.de

Received: 9 June 2008
Revised: 23 December 2008
Published online: 29 January 2009

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of populations of random Boolean networks under selection for robustness of the dynamics with respect to the perturbation of the state of a node. The fitness landscape contains a huge plateau of maximum fitness that spans the entire network space. When selection is so strong that it dominates over drift, the evolutionary process is accompanied by a slow increase in the mean connectivity and a slow decrease in the mean fitness. Populations evolved with higher mutation rates show a higher robustness under mutations. This means that even though all the evolved populations exist close to the plateau of maximum fitness, they end up in different regions of network space.