I always have my nichelings constantly gathering food, unless they're heading towards a new island. It results in there usually being over 1000 food. In some of my tribes I am extremely strict and have them be territorial, killing all wanderers who enter their territory. But some will just accept the wanderers even if they won't be breeding. For each generation, I choose some of my favourite creatures to be breeders. Often it'll be a bunch of females just with one male. I'll breed them until I get what I want from them, and compatible pairs in the next generation. The ones who I do not decide to breed immediately will go out and do exploring and collecting, same with retired breeders. Problem is some I get attached to and want to breed. I enjoy adding story to the creatures, so I had one who was hunting bunnies to impress a female, unfortunately I then realized they shared an immunity gene. But then his older brother who had been risking his life fighting the ape (I wasunlucky enough to get an ape tree on a grass mingle island), he had arrived and had a few babies with the female so the younger brother kept angrily hunting bunnies. So I do include a lot of story into the tribe, but i'll still make sure they can survive.
