Neutrality and the evolvability of boolean function landscape

Abstract

This work is a study of neutrality in the context of Evolutionary Computation systems. In particular, we introduce the use of explicit neutrality with an integer string coding scheme to allow neutrality to be measured during evolution. We tested this method on a Boolean benchmark problem. The experimental results indicate that there is a positive relationship between neutrality and evolvability: neutrality improves evolvability. We also identify four characteristics of adaptive/neutral mutations that are associated with high evolvability. They may be the ingredients in designing effective Evolutionary Computation systems for the Boolean class problem.