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From: A.J.Hirst@uk.ac.open (Tony Hirst)
Subject: Re: Lamarckian Evolution
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Message-ID: <A.J.Hirst-160195143550@uu-igor-mac.open.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 14:35:50 GMT
References: <A.J.Hirst-060195122247@uu-igor-mac.open.ac.uk> <3eufpiINN3ojd@rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE>
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In article <3eufpiINN3ojd@rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE>,
a1624091@athena.rrz.uni-koeln.de (Jan T. Kim) wrote:

> Tony Hirst (A.J.Hirst@uk.ac.open) wrote:
> 
> : it may not be a good idea in alife either (depending on the application) -
> : matural evolution may be slow, but it does give rise to robust agents; if
> : we allow for lamarckian inheritance, then we may find that we are evolving
> : increasingly brittle children that can survive only in a very restricted
> : range of environments; [...]
> 
> Why do you think that the robustness of the agents which have evolved
> in natural evolution is due to the fact that evolution is Darwinian
> rather than Lamarckian?  I would assume that in both Darwinian and
> Lamarckian evolution, agents will tend to evolve to be able to survive
> in the environments they get exposed to.
> 
perhaps i was being a bit cryptic - if by lamarckian inheritance we mean
the general term 'the inheritance of acquired characteristics' rather than
just use inheritance then:

if an individidual is capable of genetically transmitting an encoding of
some characteristic it acquired during its lifetime, and it lives in a
stable environment, than it will pass on presumably useful traits suited to
that environment; if howver, the envt changes over a time period
corresponding to a single generation, then the parent will pass on a trait
that is adaptive in its envt, but which may be maladaptive for the child's
envt.; if the envt is changing even more rapidly, and the parent individual
changes to track the envt, then the traits it passes are dependent on the
mechanism used to immartalise an acqd char. in the germ line.

tony
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      | Tony Hirst ("Monty")          | e-mail:  A.J.Hirst@open.ac.uk
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