Steering Before Selection: Energy-Limited Developmental Control as a Phenotypic Capacitor, a Pre-Specified Simulation Study

Abstract

Living systems meet environmental change at several speeds: fast physiological control during development, slower learned memory, and genetic change through selection. We asked whether developmental control, which we interpret as bioelectric and which carries a continuous energy cost, steers evolution, and we report what survived twenty-two versions of individual-based simulation, pre-specified from version 11 onwards. After a permanent environmental change, sensing absorbed the change within about 25 generations and genes took over through selection alone 340 to 450 generations later in every seed, a result replicated in a fresh pre-specified test on 20 new seeds. Control did not guide genetic change; it concealed genetic variation from selection. Control hid three to six times more harmful load than no control, and an energy shortfall released it; brief release outperformed prolonged release, and release helped only when control re-locked around the new form. The net value of release depended mainly on whether the concealed harmful load was kept in check: without reversal of harmful mutations it was a cost at 500 individuals (mean fitness 0.103 against 0.122 without control), whereas with reversal it was a benefit at every population size from 250 to 4,000 (0.632 against 0.489 at 2,000). A test that separated the factors showed that population size alone did not reverse the result and that the cost lay in the concealment itself, with release recovering part of it. We conclude that energy-funded developmental control buys time while selection rewrites the genes, conceals rather than directs variation, and acts as an energy-switched phenotypic capacitor whose value depends mainly on whether the harmful load it conceals is kept in check. The models are abstract and contain no voltages or channels, so the bioelectric reading is an interpretation and all results are model results. We set out predictions for testing these claims in developing embryos.