morph views - Aronnax9000/WatchmakerSuite GitHub Wiki

(Previous: Different Species of biomorph)

In Blind Watchmaker and WatchmakerSuite, biomorphs are presented to the user using different viewing modes, here called 'morph views.'

The illustrations of monochrome biomorphs in the User Guide introduction and the other original species of biomorphs in the previous chapter show the Watchmaker program in Breeding morph view. The program has several other modes which allow us to explore different aspects of biomorph biology and evolution. Not every mode was supported in every one of the original four Blind Watchmaker programs. The present work on the WatchmakerSuite (Java) reference implementation of Blind Watchmaker aims to provide every mode to every species of biomorph, though the implementation of a particular mode may prove too difficult to be practical, or not meaningful, for a particular species of biomorph.

Engineering morph view allows us to make changes to a biomorph's genes, and to see, in real time, the effects that our changes to the genome have on the body of the biomorph grown from the new gene values.

Pedigree morph view allows us to construct a 'family tree' of biomorphs, starting with a single parent. Multiple generations of offspring are shown in the same view, with lines indicating the relationship between parent and offspring.

Triangle morph view takes any three biomorphs we choose, and presents them as the vertices of a triangle. We can create offspring that are hybrids of the genome of the three biomorphs, with the genes of the offspring calculated as an average of the genes of the three biomorphs at the vertices of the triangle, based on their relative distances to the offspring. This mode lets us visualise a conceptual space of biomorphs, where physical distance is related to the degree of genetic difference between biomorphs. The Arthromorph genome is a particularly difficult genome to triangle, since its genome can have an arbitrarily shaped tree structure, making a straightforward 'averaging' of two or more differently-shaped Arthromorph genomes a non-obvious task.

Each of the biomorphs in the program keeps track of its parent and its offspring. We can choose to record a lineage of biomorphs, called a Fossil record which we then populate via the breeding and/or pedigree modes. At any time, we can view the fossil record, exploring the ancestry of the newest biomorph back through the generations to its original parent biomorph.

Album morph view allows us to collect our favorite biomorphs into a gallery, or album, which can be exported to persistent formats such as image files, as well as Watchmaker's own native data formats for biomorph genomes. You can also use album mode to import saved biomorphs from previous sessions, and biomorphs saved from other instances of the program.