Evidence map›Paper›PMID 22215591›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012

Historical contingency affects signaling strategies and competitive abilities in evolving populations of simulated robots.

Steffen Wischmann, Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Signalling and social learning in swarms of robots.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025
    Article
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  16. Evolution of music by public choice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2012
    Article
  17. Social complexity as a proximate and ultimate factor in communicative complexity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012
    Review
  18. Mechanistic constraint and evolutionary history matter for the origin of innovation in animal communication.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Steffen WischmannDepartment of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dario Floreano
Laurent Keller

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

One of the key innovations during the evolution of life on earth has been the emergence of efficient communication systems, yet little is known about the causes and consequences of the great diversity within and between species. By conducting experimental evolution in 20 independently evolving populations of cooperatively foraging simulated robots, we found that historical contingency in the occurrence order of novel phenotypic traits resulted in the emergence of two distinct communication strategies. The more complex foraging strategy was less efficient than the simpler strategy. However, when the 20 populations were placed in competition with each other, the populations with the more complex strategy outperformed the populations with the less complex strategy. These results demonstrate a tradeoff between communication efficiency and robustness and suggest that stochastic events have important effects on signal evolution and the outcome of competition between distinct populations.

Indexed as

Biological EvolutionCommunicationCompetitive BehaviorComputer SimulationRobotics

Identifiers

PMID22215591
PMCPMC3271901

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.