# Population > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Ecology **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A population is a set of interacting or comparable entities across which reproduction, variation, competition and demographic change can be measured. ## Machine-Evolution Context Darwinian claims require identifying the population rather than treating a lone changing object as evolutionary. In Avida and Tierra the population consists of executable digital organisms sharing constrained computational resources. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary For machine governance, population-level risk can arise even when no individual system is conscious. Rights attach to subjects; ecological controls may attach to populations and replication channels. ## Relationships [[wiki/Digital Population|Digital Population]], [[wiki/Population Dynamics|Population Dynamics]], [[wiki/Evolving Population|Evolving Population]], [[wiki/Species|Species]] ## Sources / Provenance - John Maynard Smith, _Evolutionary Genetics_; Müller, Steels and Szathmáry, “Evolvable AI” (2026).