In the present article, ginkgoalean fossil records are analysed and the data are incorporated into a sketched, 'epoch-by-epoch' framework (e.g. late Triassic, early Jurassic), based on the latest biostratigraphical evidence and the recent progress made mainly on the reproductive organs. The analyses revealed that a steep increase in diversity occurred from the middle Triassic onwards and during the late Triassic ginkgoaleans were at the zenith of diversity. In the late Triassic, almost all known ginkgoalean families simultaneously occurred. The diversity of vegetative organs increased rapidly, forming a high peak in the number of genera (8 in China and 12 in the world). In the late Triassic, in marked contrast to the absence of any record in the middle Triassic, there occurred the most diversified ginkgoalean reproductive structures so far known in the geological record. The emergence of a large number of new genera also supports an early Mesozoic, notably a late Triassic radiation of ginkgoaleans. In China, Ginkgo was recorded firstly in the late Triassic, and the commonest morphogenera Ginkgoites, Baiera and Sphenobaiera drastically increased in specific (or morphotypic) diversity from the late Triassic onwards accompanied by very high origination rates of 88.8, 100 and 91.7%, respectively. The major morphological innovations of vegetative organs accomplished in the middle to late Triassic are the appearance of dwarf shoots and the differentiation of leaves into lamina and petiole. Since then, the reduction of pedicels and number of ovules, and the increase in size of ovules became dominant. Further morphological innovations and diversification of ginkgoalean ovule organs include the fused or adnate ovule/bract, and the collared or winged ovules. In China, ginkgoaleans also started expanding rapidly in geographical distribution from the middle Triassic to the late Triassic. The fossil localities of Ginkgo increased from zero to three, Ginkgoites from one to 12, Baiera zero to 27 and Sphenobaiera three to 20 counties.The replacement of the warm-hot, nearly uniform climate with long growing season in the late Palaeozoic by the seasonal climate in the early Mesozoic of Eurasia was probably the main cause of a marked reduction of both vegetative and reproductive organs of ginkgoaleans. The latest Triassic plate movement and sea-level change that resulted in considerable habitat heterogeneity might also facilitate an increase in taxon and morphology diversity of this present-day relictual plant group.
The NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) algorithm has received considerable recognition in the field of neuroevolution. Its effectiveness is derived from initiating with simple networks and incrementally evolving both their topologies and weights. Although its capability across various challenges is evident, the algorithm's computational efficiency remains an impediment, limiting its scalability potential. In response, this paper introduces a tensorization method for the NEAT algorithm, enabling the transformation of its diverse network topologies and associated operations into uniformly shaped tensors for computation. This advancement facilitates the execution of the NEAT algorithm in a parallelized manner across the entire population. Furthermore, we develop TensorNEAT, a library that implements the tensorized NEAT algorithm and its variants, such as CPPN and HyperNEAT. Building upon JAX, TensorNEAT promotes efficient parallel computations via automated function vectorization and hardware acceleration. Moreover, the TensorNEAT library supports various benchmark environments including Gym, Brax, and gymnax. Through evaluations across a spectrum of robotics control environments in Brax, TensorNEAT achieves up to 500x speedups compared to the existing implementations such as NEAT-Python. Source codes are available at: https://github.com/EMI-Group/tensorneat.
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.