Information Thermodynamic Structure in Evolving and Adapting Systems

Abstract

The adaptability to ever-changing environment is one of the fundamental characteristics that differentiates living matters from non-living ones. The combination of passive adaptation by Darwinian evolution and active adaptation by sensing and decision-making shapes the mechanisms of adaptability. In this work, we outline that the biological adaptation shares a very similar structure with the stochastic and information-thermodynamics. Fitness, the macroscopic quantity to characterize evolutionary success, plays the similar role as the free energy in this structure. The fluctuation relation of fitness and information derived from the structure can be regarded as an extension of the concept of the evolutionary stable strategy.