Biologists have developed models to explain why different environmentally induced morphs of the same organism exist over time. Such conditional strategies are a common form of adaptation to variable environments, whereby an environmental cue allows some individuals to respond to the cue and develop into a morph that is different from the morph of individuals that do not receive the cue. Recently, these efforts have resulted in two different analytical models that give somewhat different predictions. Here we apply evolutionary computation methods to test the two analytical models. The results bear a remarkable similarity to the results of one of the two analytical models. The paper that follows presents the details of a biological application involving snails and barnacles (that occur naturally in two different morphs), moving then to an explanation of two competing mathematical models of the application. Finally, the interdisciplinary paper, which coordinates three separate research projects of a biologist, a mathematician and a computer scientist, describes the evolutionary computation methods used to support one of the two competing analytical models.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.