Evolutionary computation with extinction: experiments and analysis

Abstract

Under a species-level abstraction of classical evolutionary programming, the standard tournament selection model is not appropriate. When viewed in this manner, it is more appropriate to consider two modes of life histories: background evolution and extinction. The utility of this approach as an optimization procedure is evaluated on a series of test functions relative to the performance of classical evolutionary programming and fast evolutionary programming. The results indicate that on some smooth, convex landscapes and over noisy, highly multimodal landscapes, extinction evolutionary programming can outperform classical and fast evolutionary programming. On other landscapes, however, extinction evolutionary programming performs considerably worse than classical and fast evolutionary programming. Potential reasons for this variability in performance are indicated.