Hunger Games Lab

          What we did in this lab was hunt for food using special phenotypes. The three phenotypes were stumpys (wrists), knucklers (knuckles), and pinchers (index finger and thumb). The phenotype that was the best at capturing food were the pinchers because they had the ability to capture food with two hands and had a better grip on the food by using their index fingers and thumbs. The population did evolve. I know because the allele frequency changed over the generations. The frequency for the "a" allele grew from 0.52 of the total population to 0.82 of the total population. The frequency of the "A" allele shrunk from 0.48 of the total population to 0.18 of the total population. Also on the graph, the function of the "a" allele grows over time, where as the function for the "A" allele decreases over that same time.

          Some events in this lab were random and some were not. Some instances of random events were the random clumps or spread out food and how the organisms reacted to those events. Some instances of non-random events were that pinchers used their index and thumb, knucklers used their knuckles, and stumpys used their wrists. This is similar in nature because random events such as floods or storms happen all the time and they affect the populations of organisms. I think that the results would have been the same if there was not incomplete dominance because the pinchers would eventually outcompete the stumpys and the pinchers would become the dominant phenotype, just like how it happened when there was incomplete dominance.
          The relationship between natural selection and evolution is that natural selection favors the traits that are advantageous to survival, making it so that the individuals without that trait die off. That changes the allele frequency, which is evolution. Some strategies that people developed in order to increase their chance of survival and reproduction were grouping up, helping each other, and competitiveness. This would have affected the allele frequency of the population by giving an advantage to those who used the strategies to help their chances at survival. This happens in nature too, where many species of animals group up together in a herd to help obtain food and protect themselves.
          In evolution, the populations evolve, not the individuals because they are stuck with the genes that their parents gave them. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, but affects the genotype because the phenotypes of the individuals who have an advantage pass on the genotype that makes that phenotype, so the overall population's genotype will eventually have more and more of that genotype and phenotype. Some questions that I still have are that how did all of this start and where did it start?