The unifying theme of the Parallel Problem Solving from Nature is natural computation, i.e. the design, the theoretical and empirical understanding, and the comparison of algorithms gleaned from nature together with their application to real-world problems in science and technology. Recently the focus has narrowed down from natural computation to biological and evolutionary computation. For a long period of time, genetic algorithms in the United States and evolution strategies in Europe developed independently of each other. Now both scientific communities have started to interact and collaborate, and there are many contributions from Japan as well. This volume gives an accurate impression of the ongoing work in this rapidly growing and active scientific field.
