DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003111

Summary
This study is based on the empirical observation that the complexity of plants and animals increases as their fitness within a particular environment increases via evolution by natural selection. Here four different information-theoretical measures were used to investigate the relationship between the complexity and the fitness of evolved organisms with an information theory approach. They simulated, in-silico, the evolution of the brains of simple organisms living in a planar maze which they have to traverse as rapidly as possible, repeated over 60,000 generations. All measures showed that the minimal complexity at any one fitness level increases as the organisms become more adapted to their environment.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This paper is relevant in showing how the complexity of the things originates from the complex interplay between objects. This concept was faced with an in silico approach.

Point of Strength
This study performed a controlled in silico evolution experiment, which results match an empirical observation. This shows how a purely theoretical-based approach can successfully describe an evolutional behavior.