Special Issue: Fitness landscapes, big data, and the predictability of evolution

Evolutionary biology has become increasingly powerful in inferring past evolutionary processes from patterns in present-day genomes. However, forecasting evolution’s future routes remains an exciting intellectual challenge with substantial implications for global health and species conservation. The concept of the fitness landscape has been central to recent studies of the predictability of evolution and has inspired evolutionary biologists and mathematicians alike. This Special Issue focuses on a combination of microbial experimental evolution with next-generation sequencing, and theoretical modelling to advance our understanding of the predictability of evolution, particularly in the light of “big data".