Edinburgh Napier University

  Clonal selection is the keystone of mainstream immunology
and computational systems based on immunological principles. For the
latter, clonal selection is often interpreted as an asexual variant of natural
selection, and thus, tend to be variations on evolutionary strategies.
Retro-fitting immunological sophistication and theoretical rigour onto
such systems has proved to be unwieldy. In this paper we assert the
primacy of competitive exclusion over selection and mutation; providing
theoretical analysis and empirical results that support our position.
We show our algorithm to be highly competitive with well-established
approximationandlearningtechniques;notablyfor large,high-dimensional
problems. We further argue that it provides concise, operational abstractions
of some influential theoretical immunology.