Evolutionary Negative Module Pruning for Better LoRA Merging

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Cao, Anda, Gou, Zhuo, Wang, Yi, Chen, Kaixuan, Wang, Yu, Wang, Can, Song, Mingli, Song, Jie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Cao, Anda
Gou, Zhuo
Wang, Yi
Chen, Kaixuan
Wang, Yu
Wang, Can
Song, Mingli
Song, Jie
author_facet Cao, Anda
Gou, Zhuo
Wang, Yi
Chen, Kaixuan
Wang, Yu
Wang, Can
Song, Mingli
Song, Jie
contents Merging multiple Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) experts into a single backbone is a promising approach for efficient multi-task deployment. While existing methods strive to alleviate interference via weight interpolation or subspace alignment, they rest upon the implicit assumption that all LoRA matrices contribute constructively to the merged model. In this paper, we uncover a critical bottleneck in current merging paradigms: the existence of $\textit{negative modules}$ -- specific LoRA layers that inherently degrade global performance upon merging. We propose $\textbf{E}$volutionary $\textbf{N}$egative $\textbf{M}$odule $\textbf{P}$runing ($\textbf{ENMP}$), a plug-and-play LoRA pruning method to locate and exclude these detrimental modules prior to merging. By leveraging an evolutionary search strategy, ENMP effectively navigates the discrete, non-differentiable landscape of module selection to identify optimal pruning configurations. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that ENMP consistently boosts the performance of existing merging algorithms, achieving a new state-of-the-art across both language and vision domains. Code is available at https://github.com/CaoAnda/ENMP-LoRAMerging.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_17753
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolutionary Negative Module Pruning for Better LoRA Merging
Cao, Anda
Gou, Zhuo
Wang, Yi
Chen, Kaixuan
Wang, Yu
Wang, Can
Song, Mingli
Song, Jie
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Merging multiple Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) experts into a single backbone is a promising approach for efficient multi-task deployment. While existing methods strive to alleviate interference via weight interpolation or subspace alignment, they rest upon the implicit assumption that all LoRA matrices contribute constructively to the merged model. In this paper, we uncover a critical bottleneck in current merging paradigms: the existence of $\textit{negative modules}$ -- specific LoRA layers that inherently degrade global performance upon merging. We propose $\textbf{E}$volutionary $\textbf{N}$egative $\textbf{M}$odule $\textbf{P}$runing ($\textbf{ENMP}$), a plug-and-play LoRA pruning method to locate and exclude these detrimental modules prior to merging. By leveraging an evolutionary search strategy, ENMP effectively navigates the discrete, non-differentiable landscape of module selection to identify optimal pruning configurations. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that ENMP consistently boosts the performance of existing merging algorithms, achieving a new state-of-the-art across both language and vision domains. Code is available at https://github.com/CaoAnda/ENMP-LoRAMerging.
title Evolutionary Negative Module Pruning for Better LoRA Merging
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17753