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<!-- End of AfD message, feel free to edit beyond this point -->'''[[Speciation]]''' is a process that occurs naturally in [[evolution]] and is modeled explicitly in some [[genetic algorithms]]. In nature, speciation occurs when two populations of similar reproducing beings evolve to become too dissimilar to share genetic information effectively or correctly. By analogy, in implementations of genetic search algorithms, the event of speciation is defined by some mathematical function that describes the similarity between two [[candidate solutions]] (usually described as individuals) in the population. If the result of evaluating this function is too low, then interbreeding those solutions is disallowed or penalized. Some implementations forbid the application of the [[chromosomal crossover|crossover]] [[Operation (mathematics)|operator]] between dissimilar individuals, while others apply selection pressure by modifying fitness values.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a525/1192091cc6c138cf8010e43d72b9dfb0d022.pdf|title=Handbook of Evolutionary Computation|last=Deb|first=Kalyanmoy|last2=Spears|first2=William M.|publisher=Institute of Physics Publishing|year=1997|isbn=|___location=|pages=|chapter=C6.2: Speciation methods}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hwang|first=Keum-Sung|last2=Cho|first2=Sung-Bae|date=May 2002|title=Evolving diverse hardwares using speciated genetic algorithm|url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org:80/document/1006274/?reload=true|journal=Proceedings of the 2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2002. CEC '02|volume=1|pages=437–442|doi=10.1109/CEC.2002.1006274}}</ref>
