ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUTATION-RATES AND GROWTH-RATES IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

The paper examines the relationship between the mutation rate and the rate of growth of the population when the environment is changing. It is shown that while the global maximum of the growth rate is attained at a non-zero mutation rate, zero is always a local maximum. This suggests that a population with an initially low mutation rate will evolve to a zero mutation rate. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C72. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.