evolvability

Capacity for adaptation

Evolvability is a system's capacity to generate heritable variation that natural selection can act upon.

In biology, organisms with high evolvability can adapt more readily to environmental changes: The modular structure of the genome increases evolvability.

The concept extends to other domains—software architectures, organizations, or technologies designed to accommodate future modification without fundamental restructuring.

genetic

mutation

Permanent DNA alteration

heritabilityGenetic share of variation
genotypeOrganism's complete allele set
phenotypeObservable characteristics of organism

allele · recombination · polymorphism · genomics · chromosomal · hybridization · crossbreeding · modularity · redundancy · robustness

systems

complexity

State of being complicated

modularityDivisibility into independent units
robustnessResistance to failure
plasticityAbility to change shape

redundancy · scalability · flexibility · self-organization · adaptability · reconfigurability · resilience · architecture · interoperability · extensibility

selection

fitness

Good physical shape

adaptationFitting to new conditions
selectionChosen item or items
survivalRemaining alive against odds

reproduction · speciation · biodiversity · niche · competition · inheritance

Opposites

capacity for adaptive change

evolvabilityimmutability

Inability to change

rigidity · inflexibility · invariance · fixedness · stasis

developmental plasticity

evolvabilitycanalization

Directing into fixed courses

genetic determinism

design philosophy

evolvabilityhard-coding

Fixed values in code

final form · path dependence

Family

involve, evolve, involved, revolution, evolution, revolve, involvement, revolutionary, convoluted

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