"[Research] Defining a Biome. The Machamp Biome and the Larvitar connection"

#PokemonGO: Biomes: Where does Larvitar and Machop spawn? How widespread are Biomes (spoilers: less than you think)?Biomes seem to be influenced by how Niantic interprets an imaginary connection a Pokémon would have with our real world.The general topic of biomes is more understood than most may know due to the long forgotten work of many old researchers. It is unfortunate that their findings are not widely known because most of the new discoveries are possible due to their work establishing fundamentals. Now, more than ever due to Gen 2 release being so fresh, fake news is striking the global Pokémon Go community due to click-bait and being the first on youtube/social media. I believe more genuine info will be on this subreddit and TSR because info is not monetized here nor is social media e-peen that stressed here.A detailed post about early biome work and the current understanding of biome work can be found here. Good stuff /u/Nimleth.My little research group hopes that this post helps people understand biomes. They are a fun subject that happens behind the scenes every single time you play the game. The basics of how they work are extremely simple; anyone can help research it.Let’s begin by defining a few things (these definitions are not new, but may be new for casual readers that are not studied on the BIOME and SPAWNS topic):Biome: a property of a spawn point which determines what particular Pokémon spawn there. The exact % can be narrowed down.This is a great vision aid that illustrates spawns with various biomes within an areaS2 cells: go here for a better explanation. They are a great way to define the world map so it makes sense Niantic would use them.The Pokémon to Real World Connection: the connection that links real world geography to Pokémon biomes. Geographical characteristics such as proximity-to-water, elevation, and temperature connection seem to be some of the connections that the community has discovered thus far. More on this later.  Right after the Starters Event and before the Valentine’s Day event my coworkers and I started studying our workplace spawn points and biome. First, we split up 10 spawn points amount the 3 of us: 3-3-4. We independently recorded what spawned in our assigned spawn points and compared after about 120 recordings. We got near identical data. This is how we established that the 10 spawn points were the same biome with much confidence and enough control to proceed.Between the two events, we manually recorded 1644 spawns:PokémonPercentageSandshrew17.08%Ekans15.06%Geodude12.42%Mankey8.54%Growlithe8.39%Machop7.61%Cubone6.68%Doduo6.52%Rhyhorn6.21%Ponyta2.95%Diglett1.55%Onix1.40%Tauros1.24%Machoke0.46%Arbok0.46%Charmander0.46%Exeggcute0.46%Pokémon below 0.46%: Krabby, Paras, Pinsir, Zubat, Graveler, Jigglypuff, Magmar, Meowth, Omanyte, Primeape, Voltorb, VulpixNote:Approximate coordinates of the area: 33°44′27″N 117°52′53″WClimate is Cold Semi-Arid.Elevation of about 35m.This biome seems to be pretty widespread across Orange County, California, but there are high elevation and “grass type” biomes within the county.Area studied could be described as industrial, but the biome extended into the surrounding area which included a little residential, office, railroad tracks, and commercial. Such areas across Orange County have this biome, if not something almost identical.There is a small, dried-up canal nearby. Water Pokémon definitely spawned in the spawns near it. No water spawns are part of the 1644 recorded spawns.The boarders of this biome seemed to end at the outlines of s2 12 cells. Still need to study this more, s2maps.com was been pretty unstable for me as of late. 40% of this biome particular biome distribution is definitely defined by s2 12 cells. Still need to do more research.Interesting to see zero Pidgey and Rattata, even though these two are quite common in the Orange County downtowns and in other places. More evidence to show that particular downtowns have their own very different biome.Same thing with Caterpie and Weedle, except these little guys are not common anywhere in the main Orange County region. What is common in one area of the world is not common in others.Also, no pink Pokémon spawned during the Valentine’s day event except Exeggcute, yet Exeggcute and Jigglypuff appeared before the event. Jigglypuff appeared just once though. If we accept the theory that only pink biome-defined Pokémon got their spawn chance increased during the event, then super rare Pokémon within a biome are not considered part of the biome, in this case Jigglypuff. Since Gen 2 was released, we recorded just 230 spawns.Here is a sneak preview:PokémonPercentageSnubbull18.26%Geodude10.34%Ekans10%Growlithe9.57%Sandshrew9.57%Machop6.09%Doduo4.78%Mankey4.78%Rhyhorn4.35%Cubone3.91%Sunkern3.48 %Ponyta3.04%Slugma2.61%Houndour2.17%Cyndaquil1.30%Diglett1.30%Pokemon below 1.30%: Granbull, Shuckle, Pinsir, Exeggcute, Machamp, Nidoran (F), and Onix.We have seen no Larvitar on record or on nearby. Did see a Dratini on nearby though. Really nice to keep seeing Machop and Mankey, they are extremely strong due to their typing and buff movesets. Cyndaquil is about 3 times as common as Charmander before Gen 2; Cyndaquil still just 1.3% though. Gen 2 Pokémon make up about 30% of the Biome. Still super limited sample size; this was just a small preview.  Some Tangents:A question which leads to confusion is the constant one about how common something is without answer or question going into detail on the location of a spawn/biome. “I need Growlithe and Caterpie. Where can I find them?” Answer: “Downtown. There are so many of those at my Downtown” In reality, Caterpie have been labelled as a rare and common throughout the downtowns of the world. Different regions of the world have very different biomes, but some Pokémon seem to be staples. Some “Mountain Biome” tables show the staple Clefairy, Clefable, and Dragonite, but everything else varies.The misconception about Larvitar spawning primarily/only in hills or mountainous areas came up a lot during the first few days of Gen 2’s release. While it is true that they spawn in such areas at a good frequency, they also spawn in downtowns and typical residential areas. In Gen 1, many folks would rare hunt in hills and mountainous areas due to Dragonite pops. Once Gen 2 launched, folks would still rare hunt in hills because it was the norm before; the infrastructure to rare hunt (“other forms of tracking”) remained in these high elevation areas.  More on The PoGo Real World Connection: I remember walking through the Singapore Botanic Gardens being deafened by the sound of tropical bugs high in the trees. Sure enough, there was a whole ton of bug Pokémon obviously mixed with the Singapore Downtown biome. No such Pokémon Bug population was apparent in the downtowns of Southern California. My Colorado friends keep reminding me to not transfer all my Arcanine because they want some once trading is available. I would have never guessed Growlithe is rare there, because they are so common in SoCal.Is how Pokémon spawn deeper than we may think? Looks that way!The proximity-to-water connection is pretty obvious. We would not call this “the water biome” because it has been established already that there is at least a few water biomes.What spawns in your “city biome”. Whatever spawns in downtown Bangkok is very different from what spawns in downtown Los Angeles, yet people throw around the label “city biome” across the globe. The big question is, why is it so different? How deep is Niantic’s Real World Connection to biome and Real World Geography? What we can say is we know it exist and it is tied to real world geography (Niantic mentions this connection on the game’s official website somewhere in their FAQ and Support section).The biome diversity is very obvious and influenced by geography. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2lsHCiR