Hunger Games Lab Analyisis

1. In this lab, we simulated a population of species in which there were three different phenotypes. Through this lab, we were able to observe how different phenotypes survived better in the environment. The three phenotypes were knucklers, which had to use their knuckles to pick up food; pinchers,which had to pick up food by pinching it; and stumpys, which had to pick the food up with their wrists. This lad was representing what occurred in an environment and natural selection because the best fitted species reproduced the most.

2.The phenotype, which was best adapted, was the pinchers. This occurred because they were able to pick up the food very quickly, which resulted in them being able to pick up the most in the least amount of time.

3.The population evolved to look more like the winners. The allele frequency was of 61% to 77% for "a," which the pinchers were heterozygous recessive. We know this because the pinchers' population boomed with having 16 of the organism out of 22 in total. This shows that the population, every year, looked more like the winners than the previous years. The population also shifted from about 50/50 at the beginning to one phenotype clearly gaining offspring.

4. Like in nature there both random things and not random things. The random things included how much food was needed to survive for a year, what type of offspring the organisms would get, and also where the food was placed in the environment. The nonrandom things include how the phenotypes picked up the food.

5.The results would not have been much different if the food was larger or smaller because the pinchers would have still eaten around the same part. Their population would have just increased faster and more steadier. If there was less food, there could have been more deaths. This is similar in nature, when there is a drought, less organisms can survive because the lack of water and food.

6. If there had been no incomplete dominance, both the stumpys and the pinchers would have grown because they would have had less competition and also more food for them to eat.

7.Natural selection and evolution are close because because of natural selection, the species has to adapt and change, and some die to leave only the best, this in return leads to evolution.

8.For stumpys, they had made a strategy to lay on the ground and pick up all the food below them. The stumpys also became more of a group by working together, which led to a boom in their population. In nature, some animals adapt to have better skills and some also decide to live in groups and go searching for food together. This increases the probability of survival.

9.In evolution, almost all the organisms evolve to survive better, but some as a result are able to reproduce the most and greatly enlarge their population, while some die because of the competition and other factors.

10.I still have some questions concerning this lab. Firstly, did this lab very accurately depict what happens in most environments, or this is just a case that can only be seen in some environments? Last but not least, does evolution occur everywhere in the world?

Growing Your Own Food

  As you know, in my biology class, we have been working on 20 time projects. For my 20 time project, I decided to grow a "vegetable garden." During the past weeks, I have faced many different setbacks. I first had to choose what types of plants I was going to grow. I decided to plant carrots and radishes. I had to choose those, for I have less time than I thought I had to grow these vegetable and make them bare vegetable. Another setback, I have faced, was that because of this weather, I have not been able to plant the seeds until about a week ago. This had to be done because of the wet weather and also the fact that it was not spring yet and that there was still a bit of frost in the mornings. If I had grown them then, they would have most likely died. Basically, so far, I have planted the seeds in pots in different places facing different directions. The first is faced south, which will give it the most sunshine, and I placed the other pot facing west. I do expect that the plants facing south will grow faster and maybe, hopefully, larger. In conclusion, I have made quite a lot of progress since the last blog post, even though I was planning to be more ahead, but the climate made it impossible.

Unit 7 Reflection

  In Unit 7, my class and I learned about ecology, which is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. In an environment, there are both biotic, meaning all living things, and abiotic factors, meaning non living things such as wind or rain. There are many different levels of organization, it fist starts with an organism, then comes its population, then community, also an ecosystem, then comes the biome, and lastly, there is the biosphere. In the ecosystem, there are both producers, plants, and consumers, organisms that get food from producers. We are able to see the energy pass through the ecosystem with food chains and food webs. In a food chain, there are five different labels, including primary producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, and quaternary consumers. A food web is more accurate than a food chain because most animals eat an array of different foods. You can also see the energy being transferred by using an energy pyramid. For every level of the pyramid, 90% of the energy is lost as waste. Lastly, the most important thing we learned about was about Ecosystem Health. In an ecosystem, there are many different types of diversity from genetic diversity to ecosystem diversity. Though there is a huge amount of diversity throughout the world, much of it is on the verge of becoming extinct. In the world, about 24% of mammals are threatened with extinction, yet the most affected ones are the amphibians with 41%. There are many cause of extinction including habitat loss and over exploitation.

    After finishing this unit, I am interested in learning more about how energy travels through the ecosystems and all the different cycles, like the carbon cycle. The only unanswered question that remains is, are humans the ones to blame for all of this extinction?


   Going off of the Ecosystem Health, we were assigned to do a conservation ecology project with our group partners. Through this project, not only did we become more educated on the problems some ecosystems are facing, but we also learned how to work better in a team. Through this project, I learned about many different conflicts and threats that real life ecosystems face. This project really opened my eyes to many different threats in my ecosystem, the Madagascar rainforest. My collaboration with my partners went very well, for we all completed the tasks on time, and I feel that we communicated very well. Nothing really went wrong in our project except for that we were shocked how hard it was to create a vodcast. In my group, I feel that we were all assertive and spoke equally. We all respected each other's opinion and input. After completing this project, I feel that I should ad to my goals, that I should try to be assertive during every class and the projects I will do this semester in all my classes, and also in the future. I could become more assertive by speaking loudly and clearly stating my opinion. I should also use "I" statements instead of "you" statements.