Population Biology Homework (up to 10 points)

Your assignment will be to “play” with the BLAST animation that I’ve got linked on
the class web page and answer the questions I’ve included here. You should do the
5 runs I’ve assigned and create at least 5 more of your own.

Note that you’ll need to hit the reset button between each run. The settings will not
change. If you do change settings in ways other than I’ve outlined for 1-5, you’ll
need to start over to get back to the default and then go through each of these
changes again.

Run 1: Use the default settings present when you open the animation. What
happens with the populations of guppies and their predators? What’s the
underlying cause of this pattern?

Run 2: Increase the number of competitors to the maximum. How have the
population dynamics for guppies and their predators changed? Why do you
suppose this change has occurred?

Run 3: Decrease the number of competitors to the minimum. What’s happened?

What might be a possible explanation for why this has happened?

Run 4: Increase the initial guppy population and their birth rate to the maximum
values. What can you infer about the competitors and the predators based on these
last 2 runs? (Note this might support or fail to support your answer to the previous
question).

Run 5: Increase the initial predator population to 3. What effect does this have?
Form some hypotheses about how you might change this outcome and adjust your
settings to test those hypotheses.

Do at least 5 more runs and record your settings and the outcomes for each run.
For each run, try to come up with an explanation for the outcome; a sentence will
do. I’m going to assign points based on the ideas you come up with!