Who Wants To Live A Million Years: Analysis Of A Natural Selection Simulation

1. How many generations did it take for you to finally win a game? Why do you think it took this long? What do you think this means/suggests for most real species on Earth in terms of their species's chances of long-term survival?
2. It took me 3 generations to finally get a group to survive a million years. I believe it took me so long because I didn’t really know all of the limiting factors and I also wasn’t sure what body traits worked the best. I can apply this to real animals and understand that it make take a few tries for a species to make a descendant that works best in it’s environment. This also shows that not all species will be able to survive because they didn’t adapt the quickest. For example, I could add one animal with a desired trait and the population that breed the quickest with that animal would survive.

    2. Which initial phenotypes/phenotype combinations did you select and    

         why?Which starting/initial combinations seemed to allow you to

         continue/survive the longest (win the most games)? Why do you think this

         was so? The phenotypes that I used were, one animal with long legs  

         that was thicker and had stripes. The second animal had long legs

         and a long  neck with stripes and was skinny. My final animal was

         short and very fat  with stripes. I believe that this group worked

         because there was a larger diversity which made the chance of one

         or two animals that had the phenotype that could survive all of the

         limiting factors.

3. Do you think this population of theoretical creatures would be greatly affected by genetic drift? What evidence of drift did you see as you played the game (simulation)? I definitely believe that the population was affected by genetic drift. Some drift factors were the meteorite, volcano, ice age and the extreme heat.
4. Which alleles/phenotypes seemed to be dominant and which seemed to be recessive? How could you tell? The tall, fat and the striped genotype all seemed to be dominate because they appeared the most often een though I paired that genotype with other ones like skinny and stipless
5. Match the environments/situations/conditions below with their corresponding adaptations:

        (a) cold conditions; (b) hot conditions; (c) new large predator on the scene; (d) new tall food source

         (a)= short with short legs. Thicker/fatter. More fur.

(b)= skinnier. Long legs. Long necks.

(c )= Long legs. skinnier. stripes.

(d)= Tall legs. long necks

6. How would you improve this simulation to more realistically represent natural selection and biological evolution? Discuss at least three improvements.One improvement could be that they could add another species that could be in competition with them. A second improvement could be that the population had to migrate to another terrain or an area with different geographic features. Or an event where humans come in and take all their living space.