Learning and evolution: factors influencing an effective combination

The interplay between learning and evolution has been studied for decades, but it is still a very controversial topic. Despite the huge amount of work, to what extent the interaction between learning and evolution actually fosters the development of successful behaviors is still a matter of debate in the scientific community. Indeed, as it is well described in [1-2], there exist some controversial arguments about the effect of learning on evolution. Some studies revealed how learning accelerates evolution [3-15], while other works demonstrated that learning does not provide any advantage on the course of evolution [16-24]. As explained in [25], Evolution and learning (or phylogenetic and ontogenetic adaptation) are two forms of biological adaptation that differ in space and time. Evolution is a process of selective reproduction and substitution based on the existence of a population of individuals displaying variability at the genetic level.