A recent theoretical, deterministic model of the effects of phenotypic robustness on adaptive evolutionary dynamics showed that a certain level of phenotypic robustness (critical robustness) is a required condition for adaptation to occur and to be maintained during evolution in most real organismal systems. We built an individual-based heuristic model to verify the soundness of these theoretical results through computer simulation, testing expectations under a range of scenarios for the relevant parameters of the evolutionary dynamics. These include the mutation probability, the presence of stochastic effects, the introduction of environmental influences and the possibility for some features of the population (like selection coefficients and phenotypic robustness) to change themselves during adaptation. Overall, we found a good match between observed and expected results, even for evolutionary parameter values that violate some of the assumptions of the deterministic model, and that robustness can itself evolve. However, from more than one simulation it appears that very high robustness values, higher than the critical value, can limit or slow-down adaptation. This possible trade-off was not predicted by the deterministic model.

表型鲁棒性对适应性进化动力学的影响的最新理论，确定性模型表明，一定水平的表型鲁棒性（临界鲁棒性）是在大多数真实生物系统中适应发生和维持的必要条件。我们建立了一个基于个人的启发式模型，以通过计算机仿真验证这些理论结果的正确性，并在一系列情景下测试对进化动力学相关参数的期望。这些因素包括突变概率，随机效应的存在，环境影响的引入以及种群的某些特征（如选择系数和表型鲁棒性）在适应过程中发生变化的可能性。总体，我们发现观察到的结果与预期结果之间有很好的匹配，即使对于违反确定性模型某些假设的进化参数值，鲁棒性本身也可以进化。但是，从多个仿真中可以看出，非常高的鲁棒性值（高于临界值）会限制或减慢适应性。确定性模型并未预测这种可能的折衷。