Hunger Games Final Analysis

1. In this lab, each person had to grab as much food as they could based on their phenotype and try to reproduce by the end of the round. This lab simulated the workings of evolution on a population. 

2. The phenotype which was best at capturing food was the pinchers, because of the fact that they could grab lots of food quickly with their opposable thumbs and index fingers. 

3. The population did evolve because the allele frequency changed. At the beginning, the frequency of the "a" allele was only 48%, but by the end, it had already reached 78%. See the graph below for intermediate changes and you will be able to see the rate of change better.

4. Some events in this lab that were random were the placement of the food, the amount needed to survive, the coin-flipping that would determine the offspring. Some things that were not random were the possibilities of the offspring and the methods that we used to pick up food. This affected the evolution because some rounds had way more deaths than others because of these arbitrary conditions. 

5. The results would definitely have been more different if the food was larger. The knucklers definitely and the pinchers perhaps would have a more difficult time picking up the food in between their little fingers. This can also happen in nature where changes in external conditions can be advantageous for some and disadvantageous for others. 

6. Yes, the results would definitely have been more different. Without incomplete dominance, there would be no knucklers, only pinchers and stumpys. This probably would have resulted in more stumpys initially as the homozygous genotype would still create a stumpy.

7. The relationship between natural selection and evolution is that natural selection acts on the favorable phenotype, allowing it to survive and reproduce better, and as natural selection occurs over longer periods of time, the population will gradually change to look more like these organisms with the favorable trait. This gradual change in a population over time is evolution. 

8. The stumpys, although not necessarily best suited for survival, were very good at strategizing and teaming up. In my opinion, it looked like they only mated with each other to produce "the superior stumpy race." This seemed to cause a bounce-back in the population of the stumpy, and I congratulate them for not dying out. 

9. In evolution, it is the population that evolves. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, as that is what directly affects the organism's ability to survive. To further elaborate, in the case of complete dominance, a homozygous dominant and a heterozygous will have the exact same phenotype, so their ability to survive will be pretty much equal. As you can see, the genotype is not the whole story in this case. 

10. I still have one burning question though: If evolution is by definition a change in allele frequency, then isn't evolution occurring every second (each time an organism dies, the allele frequency changes a bit) and not really a "gradual change over time?"

Unit 7 Reflection

Unit 7 was titled "The Study of House." What this is referring to is ecology. This name actually makes quite a lot of sense because in studying ecology, we study the mechanics that take place within the biosphere, which is the "house" in which we live. Some topics we covered in this unit include food chains, food webs, ecosystem energy, populations, ecosystem conservation, and much more.

At first, these topics may seem to be very different, but looking at the larger scope of things, these topics are actually quite interrelated. For example, within the food web, energy is transferred from lower trophic levels to the higher, and this energy is actually what is needed to maintain an ecosystem's health and to keep its populations balanced. Personally, my favorite part of this unit was population dynamics, as the behavior of populations as they reach the carrying capacity K and the oscillations about K seemed very intuitive and mathematical, and math is sort of my thing. In this unit, we also watched The Story of Stuff, which I took some pretty decent notes on. You can access my notes here.

So I'm pretty familiar at this point with ecology concerning organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems, but I've also heard of another type of ecology called landscape ecology and am pretty curious to maybe find out about what that is in the future.

One big project that we did during this unit was the Conservation Biologist Project (link to the video). This project really opened my eyes and really put things into perspective, the fact that ecosystems are something undeniably real and close to us. It is our duty to protect and conserve these ecosystems as as of right now, Earth is our only home (house). Some things I felt that our group did really well was the fact that we had really good communication and everybody did what they pledged to do. However, I feel that with a little more time, maybe we could have touched up the slides, recorded perhaps a bit more attempts, and also modify the content a bit more.

Overall, this unit was one of my favorite units, and I really learned quite a bit about our house, Earth.

Below I have attached a picture of logistic growth:

Story of Stuff

• Using up resources occurs in a linear fashion, however, this linear fashion cannot continue indefinitely because of the fact that we only have a limited amount of resources on this planet
• Stuff moves through a system that starts with extraction, then production, distribution, consumption, and finally, disposal
• However, this doesn't tell the complete story as many different phenomena happen along the way
• Many people live under crazily bad conditions, like for example, when their own environments can no longer sustain them, they take jobs even for crazy low pay and harmful working conditions such as toxins in the air, etc
• The government is almost as if it's under the big corporations
• The system is set up in a way that encourages people subliminally that consuming is the most important thing that somebody can do.
• However, truth to be told, many of our natural resources are running out because of the reckless rate at which we are consuming.
• The U.S., which only accounts for about 5% of the world's population, actually consumes 30% of the resources. If everybody consumed as we did, we would need an additional 5 Earths.
• Many of the chemicals used in production haven't been tested
• 99% of consumed goods are thrown into the trash and disposed of within six months of use
• Many people are influenced to keep on buying new things because items are designed to lose effectiveness in a short period of time, or people are pressured by those around them to shop for things to "stay in trend"
• Interestingly enough, the national happiness factor is still not quite as high as the 1950s because this constant cycle of shopping, feeling depressed, working etc. leaves barely any time for people to spend time on things that actually matter, such as friends, family etc.
• Incinerating trash creates really bad toxins
• Although recycling helps, it is for sure not enough to get to the core of the problem
• However, since this heavily flawed system was created by people, it means that it is definitely possible to stop it, since we are people as well. If we can come up with a large-scale solution, this problem (at least in my opinion) can definitely be solved, we just need to raise awareness and educate the others out there