Who Wants to Live a Million Years: A Natural Selection Simulation Game

Jacob Sweet
1/14/15
Period 5

Who Wants To Live a Million Years

     It took me 13 generations to finally survive a million years and win the game. I think it took so long because there were many sudden changes to the environment that were impossible to adapt to quickly enough. I think that there was also a lot of luck involved because in order to survive you basically have to be prepared for something that is unknown and if you are not prepared then your species dies out in seconds. This suggests that there were many more species than there are now that died off when the environment changed.

     At first, I chose phenotype combinations of stripes, small bodies, long necks, and varied colors. However, the ones that allowed me to survive longer were fur, long legs, and stripes. This last combination worked well because combined, it is suitable to all conditions. Unfortunately though, some of these phenotypes died out after the first environmental change and never came back, so after the environment changed to something it could live in, I had to mutate it back into the gene pool.

     This population of fictional creatures would be greatly affected by genetic drift. For instance, if a phenotype was randomly taken out near the beginning of the game, it would make it much harder for the population to survive since it is less prepared for environmental change. This happens multiple times in the game such as when a natural disaster strikes and kills half of your creatures which happened to be the only owners of a certain phenotype. It also happens after a long period of one specific trait being needed. For example, all of my creatures had to adapt to high reaching plants by having long legs and those that did not died off, but then a predator came and killed all of the minority that unluckily received a short leg phenotype, and finally the area got hot to make sure that the short leg phenotype was gone forever.

     Two of the alleles that were definitely recessive were the ones for green and red head colors. I could tell theses were recessive because they almost always disappear within the first few seconds of the game and occasionally come back as a minority later. A dominant trait was the animals having long legs. I could tell because near the beginning of the game when all phenotypes were of equal value, most of the creatures would end up with long legs which is actually quite beneficial because that phenotype is useful in all but one of the environments. Finally, small bodies were recessive because even when the environment was hot, the creatures did not keep this phenotype.

     During cold conditions, animals with bulky, furry, and short legged phenotypes thrived. When the environment turns hot, creatures that are hairless, thin, or long necked/legged survive the best because they keep cool in the climate. When a predator appears and threatens the creatures, the long legged and/or stripped animals live on very well while everything else dies. Finally, when the food source changes to a longer stalked plant, only the animals with long legs and/or necks survive.

     To improve this game to further represent natural selection and biological evolution, I would first make random mutations into any form appear without choice. Then, I would make it possible for animals of the same species to immigrate into or emigrate out of the limited area. Finally, I would try to add behavioral traits to the mix of phenotypes. While this would make the game more complex and it would be difficult to visually represent those traits, it could add many more life like situations to the game.