Partition to Evolve: Niching-enhanced Evolution with LLMs for Automated Algorithm Discovery

Large language model-assisted Evolutionary Search (LES) has emerged as a promising approach for Automated Algorithm Discovery (AAD). While many evolutionary search strategies have been developed for classic optimization problems, LES operates in abstract language spaces, presenting unique challenges for applying these strategies effectively. To address this, we propose a general LES framework that incorporates feature-assisted niche construction within abstract search spaces, enabling the seamless integration of niche-based search strategies from evolutionary computation. Building on this framework, we introduce PartEvo (Partition to Evolve), an LES method that combines niche collaborative search and advanced prompting strategies to improve algorithm discovery efficiency. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world optimization problems show that PartEvo outperforms human-designed baselines and surpasses prior LES methods. In particular, on resource scheduling tasks, PartEvo generates meta-heuristics with low design costs, achieving up to 90.1% performance improvement over widely-used baseline algorithms, highlighting its potential for real-world applications.