Abstract
While it has been observed (Hornby et al., 2001) that developmental encodings in evolved systems may promote modularity, there has been little quantitative study of this phenomenon. There has also been little study of the factors driving the emergence of hierarchical modularity - modularity on
multiple levels, in which the modules found at a finer-grained
level can serve as elements in a coarser-grained network that
is also modular - despite the fact that most fields with an interest in modularity, including biology and engineering, define
hierarchy as an important aspect of modularity. We examine the effect of developmental encodings on the emergence
of multiple levels of modularity through the lens of two developmental systems, GRNEAT and GENRE, and find evidence that developmental encodings promote this emergence
of modular hierarchy