Monitoring Genetic Variations in Variable Length Evolutionary Algorithms

Initially, Artificial Evolution focuses on Evolutionary Algorithms handling solutions coded in fixed length structures. In this context, the role of crossover is clearly the mixing of information between solutions. The development of Evolutionary Algorithms operating on structures with variable length, of which genetic programming is one of the most representative instances, opens new questions on the effects of crossover. Beside mixing, two new effects are identified : the diffusion of information inside solutions and the variation of the solutions sizes. In this paper, we propose a experimental framework to study these three effects and apply it on three different crossovers for genetic programming : the Standard Crossover, the One-Point Crossover and the Maximum Homologous Crossover. Exceedingly different behaviors are reported leading us to consider the necessary future decoupling of the mixing, the diffusion and the size variation.