This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Artificial Evolution, EA 2001, held in Le Creusot, France, in October 2001. The 28 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper were carefully selected and improved during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The papers are organized in topical sections on theoretical issues, algorithmic issues, applications, implementation issues, genetic programming, constraint handling, and co-evolution and agent systems.