Effectiveness of Adaptive Evolution Strategies

In the process of adaptive evolution, different strategies can be employed to navigate the fitness landscape. One approach involves randomly trying possibilities and selecting the first one that improves fitness, while another approach is a local exhaustive search for the mutation that gives the largest fitness increase. However, strict systematic searching can lead to repeated attempts at the same unsuccessful strategy. To counter this, allowing paths that temporarily reduce fitness can provide alternative routes for evolution. Despite the different methods used, the overall impact of allowing backtracking in the adaptive evolution process seems negligible. The fundamental aspects of adaptive evolution appear robust enough that the specific details of how the process is carried out do not significantly alter the outcome.