Hunger Games Analysis Questions

1. In this lab, my class and I went outside and simulated a real world population survival between different organisms/species. How we survived in the lab was by "eating" and "reproducing" in order to continue this so lifestyle. There were three groups of species in the lab: pinchers, knucklers, and stumpys. Overall, we tested out how populations evolve over time also known as natural selection.

2. The phenotype that was the best at capturing food was the "Pinchers" in which they can pick up the food between their thumb and index finger and they had an advantage of using both hands to grab food quite easily. The frequency of the "A" allele drastically changed as the lab continued (50% to 16%) while the "a" allele frequency increased significantly (50% to 83%).

3. The population definitely evolved throughout this simulation experiment and we know that because the population of the "stumpys" decreased due to having a difficulty in retrieving food by the wrists in which the population started to die out. With that, the "knucklers" and "pinchers" had an advantage over each generation. The frequency of the "A" allele drastically changed as the lab continued from .5 to .16, while the "a" allele frequency increased significantly from .5 to .83.

4. When doing this experiment, some random events occurred  when it came to reproducing and how much a pocket can fill up with the "food". When reproducing, the "species", my classmates and I, chose who we reproduced with and it varied quite a lot along the way. The random moment with carrying the food was uncontrollable due to people having bigger pockets than others and the mobility. The nonrandom moment was how everyone picked up food, the specific species, throughout each generation. The random moments definitely effected the population in which one "pincher" classmate had a harder time picking up food.

5. The results would definitely be different if the food was larger than the corks, such as a softball. If the food was as large as a softball, the "A" allele frequency would be a higher percentage than the "a" allele frequency due to "stumpys" having a bigger advantage than the "knucklers". If this occured in an environment, the three different species may migrate to the different areas to get the food that will be easier for them to consume.

6. The results will be different, if there was no incomplete dominance, "knucklers". That would mean that there would be no knucklers in which in the end of each generation, the stumpys would decrease significantly.

7. The relationship between natural selection and evolution is that natural selection is the mechanism that drives evolution while evolution is the genetic makeup of a population over time.

8. Strategies that individuals adopted throughout the experiment includes how some species decided to mate with the pinchers in order to have the likelihood of survival for their offspring and using shirts as an advantage to achieve more food.

9. In evolution, the whole population evolves and natural selection acts on both genotype and phenotype, with that, my justification for this is revealed through my graph.

10. If this lab continued, would the allele frequency reach a limit?