Hunger Games Final Analysis

1. In this lab, we divided ourselves into three groups: the stumpys, the knucklers, and the pinchers. This simulated three different alleles in a population. We had to collect as many corks as possible in a limited amount of time which represented collecting food.We needed a certain amount of corks to survive and reproduce, and we got to choose whom we would reproduce with. This process simulated evolution and natural selection because only the strongest survived.
2. We found that the pinchers were the best at collecting food because they could use their entire hands which made it easier to collect a lot of food at a time.
3. Evolution is defined as a change in allele frequency, which means that in our simulation, the species evolved. By the first two trials, the frequency of recessive "a" alleles grew from 52% to 96.67% which is a clear change in allele frequency.
4. One non-random factor was that the everyone tried to mate with the pinchers so that their offspring was more successful. This made the evolution to pinchers much faster. One random factor is the distribution of food across the field. Stumpys made a comeback because they had food closer to theme but this was not because they were better at surviving.
5. If the food was larger, the knucklers and stumpys wouldn't have had as hard of a time to pick up food which would of made the allele frequency closer to 50%. If it had been smaller, the pinchers would have been the only ones that could survive and the other populations might have completely died out.
6. There would have been more pinchers because "Aa" is a pincher. Stumpys would have died out.
7. Natural Selection favors individuals who are the best at surviving and reproducing which means that they have more alleles and the allele frequency increases. This means evolution has occurred.
8. In the beginning, everyone wanted to mate with the pinchers so that there would be more pincher offspring. This is why in the first two trials, the other species almost went extinct. Stumpys made a comeback, however, because people wanted there to be more successful. This could be related to sexual selection because people wanted to mate with a certain individual not because of their survival skills.
 9. Natural Selection works on phenotype because you can be heterozygous but the natural selection only cares what trait you have and not the alleles. Evolution occurs in populations and not individuals because individuals stay with whatever alleles they have but because there is a preference of a certain allele to survive, populations tend to look like the most successful individual over time.
10. I still wonder how this simulation can become more realistic such as how to make more species and have more people do the lab.