Instructions

You start with a population of eight morphs, randomly generated. Morphs are artificial creatures, but like natural ones, they have a genome, a set chromosomes. What you see is the phenotype, but the code is the genome. Morphs are little beings, so they have only one little chromosome, composed of only nine genes. These genes are represented by letters. The first eight genes can each have one of 13 alleles, letters A-M. The last gene can have only one of 6 alleles, letters I-N. Therefore, there are 4,894,384,326 types of different morphs that can be created

What you have to do is select a mother and father, by clicking with the mouse on the check-box. Then press the box labeled Reproduction.

You will see the first generation, issued from the two parents you selected. The children's genome is a combination of the genome of both parents. But all children are different from each other, due to

1) the crossover of the genomes of the two parents,

2) the mutation(s) on their own genome

Note that these individuals are all haploid, therefore all there alleles are expressed

Then continue: select two new parents, and let them reproduce. From generation to generation, the population evolves under your eyes! You have a demonstration of the influence that both reproduction and mutation have on evolution.

If you select only one morph, you can also Clone it. That is, create eight copies of the same individual, differing very slightly, only by the random mutations. But, be careful, in doing so, you impoverish the pool of genes!

After several generations, perhaps you can be disappointed by the decreasing diversity. So, it's time to look for other people. Press the Migrate button: the two parents don't change, but you get eight new morphs. Not yet satisfied? Migrate again.

Genomes

Now, press the button "Show Genome": you see the genome under each individual. The genes, these 9 letters, are only a code. It doesn't matterwhat they do, each individually. But you can save the genome of any morphs: just copy it with the mouse, and save it in a text file. Later, whenyou want to display it again, copy it (from the file) and paste it on the father (or the mother), click the checkbox to under the father (or themother), and press the REPRODUCTION or CLONE button. The morph you saved appears in the display box, with his descendants in theeight other boxes.

Parameters

Mutations: you have the choice between none, low, medium or high mutation. Double-click your selection