Resource:Body plans

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A body plan, bauplan, or ground plan is a set of morphological features common to a group of related organisms. It typically refers to characteristics shared in a high level taxon such as a phylum or class. When necessary, the german term "bauplan" may be used to specify characteristics of a phylum while "body plan" is used for anything else. General information about the topic can be found on Wikipedia.

The features that constitute a body plan are typically major ones that are difficult to non-fatally change, such as the general arrangement of body parts, the presence or absence of segmentation, and the presence and nature of any skeleton. However, these features being difficult to change does not always mean that they are impossible to change, as body plans evolve from other body plans.

In creature design as it is used in speculative evolution, the body plan can also be thought of as the base that a design is built off of.