https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210216115125.htm

Evolution adapts and optimizes organisms to their ecological niche. This could be used to predict how an organism evolves, but how can such predictions be rigorously tested? The Biophysics and Computational Neuroscience group led by professor Gašper Tkačik at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria has now created a mathematical framework to do exactly that.

Evolutionary adaptation often finds clever solutions to challenges posed by different environments, from how to survive in the dark depths of the oceans to creating intricate organs such as an eye or an ear. But can we mathematically predict these outcomes?