Evolutionary Selection on Transient Dynamical Retention Time in Energy-Coupled Chemical Oscillators

Fourth paper in a series on dynamical rigidity in autocatalytic chemical networks. Papers 1–3 established that network growth dilutes the activation ratio, that feedback-aligned growth preserves viability but not attractor dimension, and that timescale separation between fast oscillatory cores and a slow energy reservoir transiently inflates the correlation dimension D₂ before phase-locking restores rigidity. Here we test whether evolutionary selection can prolong this transient exploratory phase. Using the enzyme-complex coupled Brusselator model from Paper 3 with fixed network topology, we subject the energy dissipation rate γ to tournament selection for transient retention time τ (number of sliding windows with D₂ > 1.2). In a pilot study (population 20, 40 generations, 3 selection + 3 neutral replicates), selection drives mean τ from 1.5 to 3.75 while neutral drift produces 1.59 (Cohen's d = 4.9). The mechanism is convergent reduction of γ by 6×, extending slow–fast timescale separation. These results demonstrate that simple evolutionary pressure acting on a dynamical phenotype can prolong high-dimensional state-space exploration in a prebiotic chemical network without genetic encoding or structural change. Pilot-scale (n = 3); full-scale confirmation (n = 10) is planned as V2.