Everything in nature have a design and purpose of it; nature contains no empirically proven meaninglessness and if it appears to do, then the purpose have not been discovered..
Mutation can be a result of adjustment towards adaptation, but can also be a result of incompatibility with a environment and even seemingly successful (series of-) mutations can lead down a one way street to a dead end and extinction. If the rules change too rapidly, "nature" can't compensate timely.
I won't propose that there is a designer, other than a highly likely universal law, that determines how a structure or gestalt must be to successfully operate or even exist in any given environment.
Everything in nature have a design and purpose of it;
Where can we look at these designs prior to implementation?
A cheeky answer could be that you'd need to locate the designer for a answer to that question..
If everything was known to us on how nature works, the question could be answered generally, but it's not, so it can't.
Changes in "design" can be observed looking at phossilized remains of certain species, existing in the same place at different ages, where the environment has undergone change.
You may be able to make a map or blueprint if you will, of possible adaptive measures that nature might apply to some form or state of being in a known environment and calculate the likely outcome of specific change to that.
While the mechanisms and laws of nature are relatively well known, they're also wildly unpredictable and measures or counter-measures to change, is not per definition obvious, as i understand it..
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