Resource:Speculative Evolution: Difference between revisions
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For the purpose of clarity, this wiki uses a generalized definition of speculative evolution to be any biological or creature design-oriented work that is intentionally made with evolutionary principals in mind and is, to the best of the creator's own knowledge at the time it was made, evolutionarily possible within the rules of the setting. This excludes any creature design not made with these principals in mind, even if it happens to accidentally appear biologically possible, but does include, for example, an honest attempt at explaining the evolution of an existing creature design, as well as evolution that involves magic if the setting allows for it. (Sagan 4 is '''not''' one such setting, but this resource is intended to be used by anyone).
==Useful
(cover what is typically expected of the genre, with links to specific topics as well)
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====Natural Selection====
:''Main article: [[Resource:Natural Selection]]''
The most well-known evolutionary force is natural selection, where some variants within a population will be more likely to survive and reproduce than others.
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This doesn't just apply to getting eaten, but to starving as well. For example, for a seed-eating species during a food shortage, individuals with large beaks might be able to eat bigger nuts that others can't access, allowing them to stave off starvation even while surrounded by competitors which ate all the small seeds first. Those with the large beaks are therefore less likely to starve and more likely to pass on their genes, and over time with repeated shortages of small seeds, this can result in the entire species evolving to have large beaks.
Within speculative evolution content, the details of these processes may be brushed aside or summarized, such as "it evolved to be poisonous and warns would-be predators with its blue coloration" or "it evolved a larger beak to take advantage of large nuts as a food source", which are easy to grasp and digest on their own; however, attempting to design macroevolutionary changes without a grasp on the underlying process can result in strange or unlikely adaptations. For example, evolving a fifth leg for stability--even if the final organism technically works and the fifth leg does indeed make it more stable, did an individual just mutate to have an extra leg one day? Why didn't it hinder its movement? How was this "fifth leg gene" able to spread through the population? While answering such questions in the text is generally optional,
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