Grovolve simulates plants growing, reproducing and dying in an environment with sunlight that shines from above. Plants acquire energy by absorbing light with their leaves and expend their energy on growth, maintenance and generating spores. When a plant runs out of energy, it dies. Each plant has a genome that determines its growth and shape, and this genome is inherited, from parent to offspring, with the chance of mutations.
These ingredients are sufficient for natural selection to occur. Plants with forms that increase their chance of survival will be more likely to have offspring, and plants with less advantageous forms tend to leave fewer offspring. Over time, small advantageous changes can accumulate and lead to large evolutionary change. It should be emphasised that while the plants and environment are simulated, the evolution they undertake is very much real – this program does not simulate evolution, it demonstrates it.
The primary selection pressure on the plants is light competition – shorter plants are more likely to be shaded by their neighbours and receive less light, and taller plants are likely to receive more light. This encourages plants to evolve to be taller and more tree-like.
Motivation
Grovolve was created because other programs that carry out evolution by natural selection are too enigmatic to be appropriate as an educational tool. Grovolve is easy to use, and by simulating a real world scenario, plants competing for light, it is accessible to users learning about natural selection.
Other educational evolution programs are easy to use but fail to demonstrate a key concept in evolution – that the process can be constructive and creative. Evolution does not just change the colour of moths or the beak size of birds, evolution made the moths and the birds in the first place, from less complex ancestors. Grovolve allows users to watch something similar, as small grass-like plants evolve into larger and more complex tree-like forms.
Usage
Running Grovolve is mostly hands-off, as natural selection works on its own without external interaction. Simply start the simulation and periodically check back to see how the plants are changing. By moving the speed slider fully to the right, you can hide the simulation to maximise the speed. The population will continue to evolve indefinitely, but you can expect interesting changes in a matter of hours to days.
For more information, follow the link to the project's GitHub page.
Installation
Grovolve users are encouraged to download ready-to-use executable files using the links on this page or from the GitHub page: github.com/rrwick/Grovolve/releases.
No installation is necessary – just unzip and run. Grovolve works equally well on Windows, OS X and Linux.
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