Species based evolutionary algorithms for multimodal optimization: A brief review

The species conservation technique is a relatively new approach to finding multiple solutions of a multimodal optimization problem. When adopting such a technique, a species is defined as a group of individuals in a population that have similar characteristics and are dominated by the best individual, called the species seed. Species conservation techniques are used to identify species within a population and to conserve the identified species in the current generation. A ‘species-based evolutionary algorithm’ (SEA) is the combination of a species conservation technique with an evolutionary algorithm, such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, or differential evolution. These SEAs have been demonstrated to be effective in searching multiple solutions of a multimodal optimization problem. This paper will briefly review its principles and its variants developed to date. These methods had been used to solve engineering optimization problems and found some new solutions.