What Evolutionary Biologists Can Learn from Artificial Life

Big questions in Evolutionary Biology and experimental limitations - The evolution of complex traits. - The role of neutral variation in adaptive evolution. - Selection for fitness vs selection for robustness. - The topography of adaptive landscapes and the evolution of landscapes. - Eco-evolutionary dynamics: how evolution changes ecology and how ecology modulates evolution. - Evolution of phenotype-genotype maps. - The evolution of genetic systems (sex, speciation, genome architecture). The advantages of microbial Experimental Evolution - They are easy to propagate and enumerate. - They reproduce quickly, which allows experiments to run for many generations. - They allow large populations in small spaces, which facilitates experimental replication. -They can be stored in suspended animation and later revived, which allows the direct comparison of ancestral and evolved types. -Many microbes reproduce asexually and the resulting clonality enhances the precision of experimental replication. -Asexuality also maintains linkage between a genetic marker and the genomic background into which it is placed, which facilitates fitness measurements. -It is easy to manipulate environmental variables, such as resources, as well as the genetic composition of founding populations. - There are abundant molecular and genomic data for many species, as well as techniques for their precise genetic analysis and manipulation.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. BitLab (http://www.bitlab-es.com) Universidad de Málag