Effective fitness is used in Evolutionary Computation to understand population dynamics.[1] While a biological fitness function only looks at reproductive success, an effective fitness function tries to encompass things that are needed to be fulfilled for survival on population level.[2] In homogeneous populations, reproductive fitness and effective fitness are equal.[1] When a population moves away from homogeneity a higher effective fitness is reached for the recessive genotype. This advantage will decrease while the population moves toward an equilibrium.[1] The deviation from this equilibrium displays how close the population is to achieving a steady state.[1] When this equilibrium is reached, the maximum effective fitness of the population is achieved.[3]
The effective fitness function models the number of fit offspring[1] and is used in calculations that include evolutionary processes, such as mutation and crossover, important on the population level.[9]
The effective fitness model is superior to its predecessor, the standard reproductive fitness model. It advances in the qualitatively and quantitatively understanding of evolutionary concepts like bloat, self-adaptation, and evolutionary robustness.[3] While reproductive fitness only looks at pure selection, effective fitness describes the flow of a population and natural selection by taking genetic operators into account.[1][3]
A normal fitness function fits to a problem,[10] while an effective fitness function is an assumption if the objective was reached.[11] The difference is important for designing fitness functions with algorithms like novelty search in which the objective of the agents is unknown.[12][13] In the case of bacteria effective fitness could include production of toxins and rate of mutation of different plasmids, which are mostly stochastically determined[14]
Applications
When evolutionary equations of the studied population dynamics are available, one can algorithmically compute the effective fitness of a given population. Though the perfect effective fitness model is yet to be found, it is already known to be a good framework to the better understanding of the moving of the genotype-phenotype map, population dynamics, and the flow on fitness landscapes.[1][3]
Models using a combination of Darwinian fitness functions and effective functions are better at predicting population trends. Effective models could be used to determine therapeutic outcomes of disease treatment.[15] Other models could determine effective protein engineering and works towards finding novel or heightened biochemistry.[16]
^ abcdStephens CR, Vargas JM (2000). "Effective Fitness as an Alternative Paradigm for Evolutionary Computation I: General Formalism". Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines. 1 (4): 363–378. doi:10.1023/A:1010017207202. S2CID1511583.
^Schaffer JD, Sichtig HM, Laramee C (2009). A series of failed and partially successful fitness functions for evolving spiking neural networks. Proceedings of the 11th annual conference companion on Genetic and evolutionary computation conference - GECCO 09. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1570256.1570378.
^Afanasyeva A, Buzdalov M (2012). Optimization with auxiliary criteria using evolutionary algorithms and reinforcement learning. Proceedings of 18th International Conference on Soft Computing MENDEL 2012. Vol. 2012. pp. 58–63.
^Divband Soorati M, Hamann H (2015). The Effect of Fitness Function Design on Performance in Evolutionary Robotics. Proceedings of the 2015 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference - GECCO 15. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2739480.2754676.
^Fernandez AC (2017). "Creating a fitness function that is the right fit for the problem at hand". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Handa H (2006). Fitness function for finding out robust solutions on time-varying functions. Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation GECCO 06. ACM Press. CiteSeerX10.1.1.421.930. doi:10.1145/1143997.1144186.
^Lehman J, Stanley KO (2011). "Abandoning objectives: evolution through the search for novelty alone". Evolutionary Computation. 19 (2). MIT Press - Journals: 189–223. doi:10.1162/evco_a_00025. PMID20868264. S2CID12129661.
^Woolley BF, Stanley KO (2012). "Exploring promising stepping stones by combining novelty search with interactive evolution". arXiv:1207.6682 [cs.NE].
^Lehman J, Stanley KO (2010-09-24). "Abandoning objectives: evolution through the search for novelty alone". Evolutionary Computation. 19 (2): 189–223. doi:10.1162/EVCO_a_00025. PMID20868264. S2CID12129661.