Hey, thanks for the submission. With the big caveat that I haven’t actually played the game, just read it, here’s my review.
Theme / Map
This game stood out by being one of the full board game submissions I read. It reminded me a lot of Evolution / Evolution: Climate / Oceans. Which is good, as I love those games. The addition of a map to that kind of game adds a cool mechanic. However, I don't think the map mechanic here fully addressed the theme. It's really just one map with multiple species. Maybe the different levels of competition (herbivore, predator, etc.) creates multiple views of the map? In any case the map is very important to the design.
Elegance
Regarding design, overall I thought it seemed like it would be fun. I chuckled at "resolve the conflict through arm wrestling", but I do think that rule is ableist. Perhaps you could provide other options for resolving a tie. Compared to the RPG submissions, I really felt I would have to play this to see how well balanced it is and to discover the emergent strategies.
Tone and style
Overall the text was functional. I did notice a few spelling errors, e.g. “Planes” should be “Plains.” If you iterate, perhaps adding some layout would make the game a bit more attractive, but for a jam that’s no big deal. It’s great you added your own game art. I feel like writing and erasing species names on the map might get annoying? Maybe you can use tokens or slips of paper with the species name on it instead? I’m not sure.
Easy to understand
I thought the game was easy to understand. One point is that it appears to introduce creating a species and the tree of life without explaining them (#2 on page 1). If you do that, perhaps you should link to that section of the document so players know that explanation is coming? Or just say, “see section X.”
“Add their starting species”: does that mean write in the name? (#2 on page 1) Perhaps this could be clarified.
Thanks for the opportunity to review your game.