Communication

Like any other biological trait, communication can be studied from at least four perspectives: mecha-nistic, ontogenetic, functional, and phylogenetic. In this article, we focus on the following phylogenetic question: how can communication emerge, given that both signal-producing and signal-responding abilities seem to be adaptively neutral until the complementary ability is present in the population? We explore the problem of co-evolution of speakers and hearers with artificial life simulations: a population of artificial neural networks evolving a food call system. The core of the article is devoted to a careful analysis of the complex evolutionary dynamics demonstrated by our simple simulation. Our analyses reveal an important factor, which might solve the phylogenetic problem: the spontaneous production of good (meaningful) signals by speakers because of the need for organisms to categorize their experi-ence in adaptively relevant ways. We discuss our results with respect both to previous simulative work and to the biological literature on the evolution of communication