Hunger Games Conclusion Analysis

1. In this lab, we were assigned a phenotype, stumpys, knucklers, or pinchers. These were all phenotypes of birds. The objective of the lab was to pick up enough food to both survive and reproduce. The amount of food, which was represented by wine bottle corks, needed to survive and reproduce changed depending on the year. stumpys could only pick up food with their wrists. knucklers could only pick up their food in between their knuckles, excluding thumb. The pinchers could pick up their food by pinching the corks in between their thumb and index fingers. This lab simulated natural selection by highlighting which phenotypes could survive and reproduce most.

2. The knucklers were the best at capturing food because they had a large and flexible mouth in which multiple pieces of food could fit. One of the most efficient tricks to picking up food as a knuckler was to stack pieces of cork on top of each other picking up 2 pieces of food at a time. This would double the amount of food picked up, and lead to a flourishing population.

3. I found that the population greatly evolved in favor of the little "a" allele, which was the knucklers and pinchers. In the first 3 years, there was a constant increase in the "a" allele, and a constant decrease in the "A" allele. The "a" allele frequency after the first trial, second year, jumped from 0.5 to 0.67, and then even further up to 0.72 in the third year. The "a" allele rose to almost 75% of the gene pool, and stabilized at that level. This causes evolution, because evolution is a change in allele frequency.

4. The location of food was random to an extent. For some trials, the food was all placed in a pile, where the fastest of all participants would reach the food the quickest. For the most part however, the placement of the food was random. This was similar to genetic drift, where the location of the food would affect the population, whether it be drastic or minuscule. Sometimes there would be a major decrease in population, or even phenotype size due to the placement of food. When the food was spread out over a wide area, stumpys had great difficulty picking up food, but knucklers and pinchers had great success. If the food was in large piles, then the knucklers and pinchers had less of an advantage over the stumpys.  Another random factor was the amount of food necessary to survive and reproduce. This also included whether or not there was plastic among the food. The participants never knew how much food was needed or whether or not they would survive. The one year there was a spike in plastic in the food source, there was a drastic change in the population. The population decreased by over half. However, a non-random factor was who mated with who. This was a form of sexual-reproduction, since participants usually mated with friends rather than strangers. Based on this factor, what phenotype their offspring had was totally random, which sometimes stopped the population from evolving. Even if two pinchers mated, there was chance of having a stumpy. This prevented evolution, which would have gotten rid of stumpys.

5. The results would have been very different if the food was a different size. Depending on how much the food size is increased, the stumpys would have less to no disadvantage, considering that it is much easier to pick up larger food with your wrists. The pinchers and knucklers would also lose their advantage, and if larger enough, the food would be too big for their mouths to pick up. If the food was smaller, then the pinchers and knucklers would have even more of an advantage. This means that the stumpys would go extinct much quicker, and the pinchers would rise to the top of the food chain. In nature, evolution occurs throughout the food chain, which means that predators must deal with different size foods. As the food evolves, the predators must evolve to eat this food. This occurs by change in phenotypes. Some phenotypes go extinct while others flourish.

6. The results would have been very different if there was not incomplete dominance. If there was natural evolution, then the population would have been void of stumpys within the first 4 years. The knucklers would have also dominated the population by the fourth year. This would have lead to evolution that favored the knucklers.

7.  Natural selection causes allele change, and evolution is allele change. In other words, natural selection causes a change in the gene pool. The change favors the alleles that help the organisms survive and reproduction. This change in allele frequency is evolution.

8. I am not sure of any strategies that pinchers used, but as a knuckler, I doubled my food intake by grabbing two pieces of cork, one after the other. Instead of picking up each piece and saving it, I would do something similar to stacking them on top of each other. This doubled my food intake and helped me survive and reproduce all seven years. Stumpys, on the other hand, had trouble picking up any food in general. This is where they adopted the strategy of covering the food from competition, and waiting until it was safe to pick up their food. This helped a few organisms survive, but that phenotype was at a disadvantage.

9. The population evolves into organisms with the desirable traits that help it survive and reproduce. Natural selection acts on both the genotype and the phenotype. Natural selection affects both the genotype and the phenotype. The genotype's physical expression is the allele, which is the phenotype.

10. The only question I have is where to the alleles come from in the first place. If a population is made up of organisms with a certain allele, where does the new allele come from when evolution occurs. I know it comes from certain organisms with that new allele, but where did that organism get that new allele?

Unit 7 Reflection

Unit 7 was focused on ecology. Although we learned about the basics of ecology, it seemed as if everything changed or specified with another vodcast. The most common big ideas were homeostasis and interdependence, but I found that interdependence was more present while we focused on the lack of homeostasis. By this I mean that there were so many threats and changes to the ecosystems that native organisms could not adapt fast enough. One example is how climate change in ecosystems is a major factor in the extinction of organisms. After learning the basics, we learned about the food chains and food webs. At first, I thought that food chains were as far as life goes, but apparently it gets much more complicated. The most abstract and interesting thing about this topic is an alternating extinction. If a secondary consumer goes extinct, then the then the tertiary consumer goes extinct while the primary consumer flourishes. This would later translate into the primary producers going extinct due to the overwhelming numbers of primary consumers. The fact that only 10% of the energy of an organism is passed along to its predator is still surprising. They reason is because of the waste factors like heat and feces. However, it is still only 10% that travels throughout the organisms. I wonder what would happen if the numbers were to all of a sudden increase. Would there be a flourishing of all species due to less food consumption for the same amount of energy, or would it lead to sport hunting after a while? Populations was a pretty fun topic to cover considering the fact that I learned most about this topic. I knew that there was such a thing as overpopulation, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I did not know about carrying capacity and that humans were closing in on the estimated carrying capacity at an alarming rate. The ecosystem health vodcast was an eye-opener for me, as I did not know humans were doing as much damage as they really are. I was surprised to see the data visualized into graphs and tables, and see to alarming coincidence about the 6th mass extinction and the growth of humans. I did not know that Exotic/Introduced species was such a major factor in the destruction/extinction of species. I thought it would simply lead to overpopulation. The vodcasts in this unit were enjoyable because they also incorporated common sense, and were not just information thrown at you.

I am really interested in the 6th mass extinction on the way of reaching a breaking point. I want to learn more about the limits of the planet such as the carrying capacity and what animals would be affected by the extinction. I would also like to learn more about the exotic/introduced species, mostly because it has effects that I did not know about. I would also like to test multiple hypothetical situations such as 'what if we introduced an exotic species but also brought that species' predator to maintain populations. This predator could be a secondary consumer or a quaternary consumer, but I think the latter would do better due to the lack of energy they receive, which will keep their population size low. Another hypothetical possibility would be to only bring in decomposers, which would not lead to extinction, mostly due to the organisms feeding on things that are already dead.

For the Conservative Biologist Project, I worked in a group with Eng Kwa, Karthi Sankar, and Shreya Katkere. In my opinion, we worked rather well together, but that was partly to the fact that I slightly dominated in the beginning. Well, it was really more like taking initiative, because I just lead the group through the team contract. Soon, however, they got the hang of such things and began to work together equally. The project ran rather smoothly, and mostly everyone was assertive at different points. There were times where I dominated slightly because I had felt that no one else was stepping up and leading,  but I don't think I was aggressive or overly dominant. In my opinion, I was more assertive in leading. I say this because I prompted some group members to do their work or to go the extra mile for the project.

Story of Stuff

Stuff moves through a cycle: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption, Disposal. Called the material's economy. System is linear. Cannot run a linear system on a finite planet forever. Clashing with world's limits.

System is missing people. Some people are more important than others, such as the government and the corporations. The corporations are larger than the government.
What's missing:
Extraction: We are running out of resources. In past three decades, one third of resources of planet are gone. US has 4 percent of forests left and 40% of water is undrinkable. US is using 30% of world's resources with only 5% of the world's population.
Production: Energy is used to mix resources with toxic chemicals to make toxic contaminated products. 100,000 synthetic chemicals used today, with 10% tested for health impacts and none tested for synergistic health impacts. Because of contaminants, human breast milk is the most contaminated food in the world. US admits to releasing about 4,000,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals annually.
Distribution: Goal is to keep inventory moving as fast as possible. Keep prices low. Skimp on employees. Externalized costs: we are not paying for the stuff we buy.
Consumption: US is nation of consumers. Only 1% of products that run through materials economy is trashed or not used within 6 months. Victor Lebow, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
Planned Obsolescence: Designed for the dump. They make stuff to be useless as quickly as possible.
Perceived Obsolescence: convinces us to discard products that are perfectly useful. Change the way stuff looks.
Advertisements play a huge role in this. 3,000 advertisements targeted at us a day.
Disposal: Each US citizen makes 4.5 pounds of waste daily. Either straight to landfill or burned and then sent to landfill. Incineration releases the toxins in the products. Dioxins are formed by incineration. These are super toxins. Some corporations export waste. Recycling reduces stress at both ends.
Recycling is not enough:
1. For every 1 garbage can of waste produced, there were 70 garbage cans produced to make that junk.
2. Much of the garbage cannot be recycled. Designed not to be recycled