The effect of environmental dynamism on evolution and evolvability

This paper describes a series of simulation experiments examining the effect of environmental dynamism on evolution and evolvability. Decreasing dynamism had a modest positive effect on evolution which was enhanced when mutation rate was decreased and culling was increased. Decreasing mutation rate and increasing culling had a stronger effect than either alone. Decreasing dynamism had a modest effect on evolvability and this effect increased to a point for decreasing mutation rates. Therefore both evolution and evolvability were affected by decreasing environmental dynamism but the evolvability advantage disappeared when population diversity was decreased.