Hello, this is a quick introduction to Grovolve,
a program that demonstrates evolution by natural selection using simulated plants.
And if you let it run for a day or two, you'll see the plants evolve to be taller...
and taller...
and more complex...
and having started as simple grass-like plants, they end up looking like trees.
Now, even though the plants are simulated, the evolution is very much real.
The plants were never pre-programmed to become taller and more complex;
they did that on their own due to the selection pressure of light competition.
Some of the things you can do in Grovolve are
turn on the shadows, so you can see where the light is reaching,
and which plants are successfully capturing it.
You can view the letters of an individual plant's genome.
You can adjust the environment to see how the plants adapt to different levels of light or gravity.
And how mutation rate affects evolution.
And you can even adjust any of the low-level settings of the simulation.
Lots of information is available, including plots of plant properties over time.
And a historical record of the plants' evolution throughout the simulation.
Grovolve is free, and it runs equally well on Windows,
Mac
or Linux.
And there are download links on the website, so try it for yourself.
