Eur. Phys. J. B (2017) 90: 186
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80409-8

Regular Article

The revival of the Baldwin effect

¹ Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 369, 13560-970 São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil
² Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Grup de Genòmica, Bioinformàtica i Biologia Evolutiva (GGBE), Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

^a e-mail: fontanari@ifsc.usp.br

Received: 10 July 2017
Received in final form: 6 August 2017
Published online: 11 October 2017

Abstract

The idea that a genetically fixed behavior evolved from the once differential learning ability of individuals that performed the behavior is known as the Baldwin effect. A highly influential paper [G.E. Hinton, S.J. Nowlan, Complex Syst. 1, 495 (1987)] claimed that this effect can be observed in silico, but here we argue that what was actually shown is that the learning ability is easily selected for. Then we demonstrate the Baldwin effect to happen in the in silico scenario by estimating the probability and waiting times for the learned behavior to become innate. Depending on parameter values, we find that learning can increase the chance of fixation of the learned behavior by several orders of magnitude compared with the non-learning situation.