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Environmental Influence on the Evolution of Morphological Complexity in Machines

Figure 5

Complexity over evolutionary time versus neutral shadows.

This plot compares morphological complexity () over evolutionary time for all single-objective experiments in the control environment (black) and all icy environments (blue) along with several neutral shadow models. Solid lines denote means (taken across all best-of-generation individuals from all trials in that environment) and dotted lines denote one unit of standard error. The purple line depicts the naïve shadow model: completely random selection except for a preference for valid morphologies. The remaining lines depict the alternate shadow models with reproduction depths matched to the two real evolutionary experiments (see Text S1 for details). Yellow = shadow model a matched to the control environment, green = shadow model a matched to an icy environment, red = shadow model b matched to the control environment, and gray = shadow model b matched to an icy environment.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003399.g005