[color=#35FDF3][b][u]Ryoka[/u][/b][/color]
When the class finally came to a close, Ryoka found that most of her notes had less to do with the relationships between pokémon and their environments, which frequently felt like common sense, and more to do with theoretical subversions thereof. As an example, Sneasel around Snowpoint city largely subsisted off of stolen Hoothoot eggs, resulting in relatively few Noctowl in the area. However, if you crossed the local Noctowl with Blissey who produced eggs in abundance and freely handed them away for consumption, they would likely achieve a symbiotic relationship with the Sneasel resulting in rapid population growth. It follows, then, that making the local Machoke populations more carnivorous by crossing them with, say, an Arcanine, would probably take care of that problem, but then the Beefy Fire Dog might threaten the local Snover populations.

Would making all these changes actually accomplish anything of value? Probably not, but it was fun to think about.

In any case, the biggest roadblock to her research going forward was, rather consistently, DNA samples. She had samples from her mother's battling team and her father's army of Shuckles, and she's picked up samples from common pokémon around Jubilife and her home back in Tōno, but as far as serving as a proper sample database, it left much to be desired, especially when certain species seemed completely incompatible with the methods she was using for Alk. The best avenue for acquiring more samples right now seemed to be from other students, but she wasn't sure who to approach about it first. Classmate thesis topics could be looked up on the website the school used for assignments, but a lot of them were a little too vague and nebulous for her to feel confident that her work could advance their own. I mean, pokémon cuteness? How do you measure that?

Well, when in doubt, might as well pick arbitrarily. As the other students were packing up their things and leaving, Ryoka walked up to the front of the class to talk with their temporary professor stand-in.

[color=#35FDF3]"Jason? I'm Ryoka. If you have time before your next class, I was wondering if you'd care to discuss a potential collaboration regarding our respective topics of research."[/color] Gender-based evolutionary dimorphism was certainly a niche subject of research, but the genetic markers within chimeras certainly presented a potential avenue of evolution for pokémon that otherwise couldn't due to their gender. She wouldn't be able to demonstrate as such, given a transformed Ditto can't undergo a true evolution like the subject of their transformation, but maybe she could talk about the applications of gene sequencing with the man.