Hunger Games Final Analysis

1. In this lab, we split the class into 3 phenotypes that all needed to eat and reproduce to simulate a real world population of organisms trying to survive. 
2. The pinchers were the best at capturing food because they had the easiest mechanism to grab the food, since human fingers are very strong and well trained from doing everyday activities.
3.  In this lab we asked the question "Do populations evolve?". We found that they do, and not always in favor of the "fittest" organism. The population evolved and the evidence of this is that stumpies went from 8 out out of 23 in the population, which is about 1/3 of the population, to 3 out of 23, to completely extinct. This is evidence of various forms of natural selection since the number of offspring fell into different categories based on who survived. This data supported our claim because this process leads to evolution over time. 
4. In this simulation, the beak assignment was not random because it was given to each person and everyone was using the same grabbing technique in their phenotype. But, factors like pocket storage for food, and running speed and aggressiveness were random because different people have unique characteristics and clothes they wore for the lab. 
5. If the food was larger, then people might have gotten more food each because each person could only carry so much food in their hands and clothes. However if the food was less, the competition would be stiffer and people would be more aggressive to "survive". This applies to nature because sometimes there are enough resources and all organisms can live in harmony but when scarcities come up, competition gets much stiffer. 
6. The results would have been different if there wasn't incomplete dominance because stumpies would have shown up instead of knucklers. Actually, there wouldn't be any knucklers or many stumpies in existence because they wouldn't survive. 
7. Natural selection is the main theory behind evolution. Because of competition between organisms, populations change and evolve over time. 
8. Many people mated with others in their own phenotype to ensure survival, which was a good strategy for double dominant or double recessive genotypes. This would affect the gene frequency because it would go higher in the direction of the organisms that mated with each other. This is exactly what happens in nature because each species mates with one another so they ensure having more offspring like themselves.   
9. In evolution, organisms evolve as their genotypes and phenotypes do so. Natural selection also acts on both parts of an organism because as the genotype changes, it usually shows in the phenotype.

How would results vary if we mimicked an ecosystem more accurately? For example, if we placed food in harder to reach places or gave everyone limitations (like with their pockets), how would results change?