[FRIAM] Rugged fitness landscapes

[Jochen Fromm]

In his PhD Thesis titled "Compositional Evolution", 
Richard A. Watson (now at Harvard University)
argues that interdependencies between modules in
the genotype of an evolutionary system are associated 
with the ruggedness of the fitness landscape, see
http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/wakeley/richard/index.html 
(Table 1-1 on page 9, Figure 3-3 on page 83 of his thesis)

* Weak interdependencies: 
  smooth fitness landscape with a few optima
* Modular interdependencies (between a few modules): 
  a fitness landscape with some ruggedness
* Arbitrary strong interdependencies: 
  highly rugged landscape with many local optima

Looks plausible, but is there hard evidence for it ?
Is this true in general for evolutionary systems ?

-J.