Gene swapping makes perfect sense when the success of a given solution is due to the various contributions of the solution's components (this is closely related

Gene swapping makes perfect sense when the success of a given solution is due to the various contributions of the solution's components (this is closely related to the Credit Assignment Problem). For example, a 'random' tour of the traveling salesman might have a nice sensible path between Paris and Moscow, while another solution has a good path between San Francisco and Mexico City. Chromosomal crossover (the fundamental operation of genetic algorithms) can create "offspring" tours that contain both of these components. This is not at all analogous to exploring the middle between two local optima - the solution space often has no meaningful geometric structure, so being located "between" two other solutions may not make sense at all.