3rd Blog Post: Buying the Basics

I have finally bought my supplies. It was a major setback not getting them sooner. The next step is to finally get started on the experiment and making the plastics. I have learned that I need to ask help sooner from others in order to get things done faster.

Unit 8 Reflection

This unit was primarily about gene selection and how evolution happened and how it works. Through the "Bird Beak Lab," we learned how different phenotypes help and hurt organisms in an environment, and how everything can change when a new factor is randomly added in.

In the "Hunger Games Lab," the idea of natural selection was reinforced when we experimented with how different react to environments, and how the future populations start to look like the "winners," or the organisms with the best traits.
Through vodcasts, we learned about Darwin's observations and conclusions about natural selection, ultimately saying that future generations look like the organisms with the best traits to survive. We learned how to determine allele frequency. First, you add up the total of all alleles. Then, add up the total for each type of allele. For each type, divide the number by the total. If the allele frequency has changed, then the population has evolved.
We were taught about different causes of speciation, such as behavioral isolation, caused by changes in courtship/mating behaviors or occupying different niches, and temporal isolation, in which timing prevents reproduction between populations.
Genetic drifts is when a random event drastically changes a population and results in change of allele frequency.
Lastly, we learned a lot about the history of life. In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted lab experiments that showed that the abiotic synthesis of organic molecules in a reducing atmosphere is possible. Amino acids have been found in meteorites, possibly serving as building blocks for life. 
History is broken into eras, while eras are broken into periods.
I want to learn more about how we know about the history of Earth.
In projects, I have worked towards becoming more assertive by taking a step back in projects and allowing people to do more of the work while not being micromanaged. I still need to work on finding a happy medium between this, doing work myself, and making sure everyone is still working on what they are supposed to be doing.

Hunger Games Lab

1. This lab showed natural selection. In this lab, we ran feeding tests to find the organism with the best traits. This lab stimulated how each organism responds differently to its environment.
2. The best type were knucklers because they were able to capture more food.
3. The population did evolve because knucklers grew in number while stumpies started to die off.
4. The environmental changes and placements of the food were random, but the traits that spred over time were not random. The population evolved depending on which traits were better suited to the random environmental changes.
5. The results would be different depending on the size of the food. For instance, if a lynx had little food but hares had lots, the hares would thrive a lot more for one generation because they would have more food and less predators.
6. If there was not incomplete dominance, then certain traits would not have survived at all.
7. Natural selection leads to evolution.
8. People started to cheat or use their hoodies to capture more food. The people who used strategies would have probably gotten more food than the people who did not, thus future populations would look more like the strategic people's organisms.
9. In evolution, POPULATIONS are what evolves. Natural selection acts on gphnotypes, because the best organisms with the best survival and reproductive phenotypes are the phenotypes which are passed down.
10. Can a strategic mindset be hereditary and be part of natural selection?

Progress With Plastics

I have learned how to make the bioplastics, what materials I need, and how much they will cost. I have also figured out how I am going to compost the samples. Unfortunately, I was sick for a whole week, so I was not able to make even further progress. The next step for me is to get my materials. I can apply the information to make my own bioplastics in the community by making plastics and showing others its usability and ability to biodegrade.

Bird Beak Lab

My first hypothesis was that if individuals with traits that help them survive better reproduce more, then there will be more of these individuals. The tweezers beak, the helpful trait, had 2-4 more chicks than the other types of beaks. This shows that individuals with better traits leave more offspring. 

My second hypothesis was "if better traits become more common over generations, then the organisms in the future generations will have more of these traits." In future generations, there are more tweezer-beaked birds because of how many more offspring birds with that trait have. This shows that populations begin to look more like the "winners."

For the second part of the lab, a new situation was introduced. We only had ten seconds instead of sixty to get food. We were asked "if natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?" My hypothesis was that if natural selection occurs in a population and tweezers did so well before, then tweezers will slowly become more dominant as other populations decrease even more. 

A possible error could be that we did not stop picking up food at exactly ten seconds. This could potentially cause certain birds to obtain more food and therefore more offspring that they actually would. To minimize this, people manning the beaks should be more attentive and fast to the end of ten seconds signal.

Another possible error could be desire to continue. One of my group members stopped trying, then started to try harder again a few trails later. This throws off the population and food obtained, going down then skyrocketing upward. To minimize this, group members should have enough respect for the lab to try continuously throughout the lab.

This lab was done to demonstrate a realistic model of natural selection. From this lab I learned that species that have traits better suited to their environment have more offspring, which helps me understand the concept of natural selection. Based on the information gained with this lab, I can see now that humans can greatly effect populations because of the new situations and environments that we can put them into.

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