Goldsby, Heather, Benjamin Kerr, and Charles Ofria. “Major Transitions in Digital Evolution.” In Evolution in Action: Past, Present and Future , pp. 333-347. Springer, Cham, 2020.
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The astonishing complexity of the world around us is the result of major transitions in evolution where lower-level entities unite to form a higher-level unit: living and reproducing as one. These transitions give rise to many questions within evolutionary biology, but can prove challenging to study due to their rare occurrence in nature. Here, we describe a digital evolution approach where cells, organisms, and worlds all exist within the framework of a computer and as such have rapid generation times and are amenable to experimental control, replaying key events, and precise data tracking. Using this approach we describe our previous experiments exploring fraternal major transitions in evolution—transitions that occur when identical lower-level units (e.g., cells) remain together as one higher-level unit (e.g., a multicellular organism). We have performed experiments to test key hypotheses regarding the formation of higher-level units and the reproductive and task-based division of labor that can evolve once these units are in place.We then describe a series of on-going studies that explore hypotheses regarding the forces that prevent higher-level units from reverting to their lower-level origins, how plasticity may predispose the evolution of division of labor, and how egalitarian transitions (which occur when different lower-level units come together) may occur.