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What is GenePool?
It's a computer simulation where hundreds of virtual organisms evolve swimming skills. These organisms are called "swimbots". You can set mate preference criteria and thus influence what the swimbots consider as attractive qualities in potential mates. The most attractive swimbots get chosen most often to have little babies, and so their genetic building blocks propogate to future generations. Eventually, swimbots get better at pursuing each other, competing for food, and becoming attractive to other swimbots. Local gene pools emerge which compete for sex and food (for energy to have more sex). Eventually a dominant sub-population takes over. Sometimes, everyone just dies. That's not a bug. That's nature. Okay, it's artificial nature. If you want, you can move swimbots and food around to help your favorite critters survive. Gene Pool is best appreciated as a virtual Darwinian aquarium in which you initiate a primordial soup, and then occasionally check up on what virtual Mother Nature is up to. In Gene Pool you can "Tweak Ecology", which means that you can change food and energy settings. Question: what happens if you tweak it so swimbots give (ALL) of their energy to their offspring when they mate? Here's a subtle hint: They die as soon as they give birth. Next question: what does this portend for evolution in the long term? Try it and find out. Who Made It? Gene Pool was created by Canton Becker Brian Dodd Luka Negoita Ken Pearce Julia Smith Karl Stiefvater Barry Stump Book Chapter This is a draft of a chapter about Gene Pool published in
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