  We use a high-resolution dissipationless simulation to study the evolution of
the dark matter and halo distributions in a spatially flat cosmological model
dominated by a cosmological constant $\Lambda$ and cold dark matter
($\Lambda$CDM). In order to quantify the evolution of structure, we calculate
the Minkowski functionals of the halos and the dark matter component at various
redshifts. A comparison of Minkowski functionals and the more standard
correlation function analysis shows that the Minkowski functionals contain
information about correlation functions of arbitrary order. While little
evolution of the Minkowski functionals of halos between $z=4$ and $z=0$ is
observed, we find that the Minkowski functionals of the dark matter evolve
rapidly with time. The difference of the Minkowski functionals of halos and
dark matter can be interpreted as a scale dependent bias. This implies that
scale-dependent bias is a property of not only the two-point halo correlation
function, but also of correlation functions of higher order.
