How does a tree (or any plant, really), know to evolve to produce a delicious fruit or a poison berry, a seed inside an impenetrable shell, or invent a type of flying machine, in order to reproduce? (Each of these examples exists in my backyard)
How do they receive feedback about their evolutionary experiments? How do they know it worked/failed. [10]
There is no knowing or feedback.
Mutations are random and there are many more failed mutations than successful ones.
You only see the successful species for that very reason, the failed ones have not been able to compete or pass their genes on at an appropriate rate.
Well, that’s feedback.
That the feedback mechanism that makes the process work. What is hard to understand is that it “informs” a population, not any individual.
It’s feed back only in the sense that it can be seen as a success or a failure by an independent observer.
It’s not like a tree can see that last year’s seeds weren’t very good and try a different mutation this year.
Genes are not self aware, mutations do not have an end goal and survival simply comes down to chance.