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

Today you will be putting into practice some of the ideas we have been discussing with regards to biological evolution and natural selection.


Directions

1. Open the Who Wants to Live A Million Years flash-based natural selection simulation game at http://coolsciencelab.com/who_wants_to_live_a_million_years.htm.
2. Click the "Learn about Natural Selection" button to read about Charles Darwin's breakthrough idea on the basic mechanism of evolution.
3. Read the questions below and keep them in mind as you play the game.
4. Follow the instructions given in the game and play at least 20 times.
5. Take the quiz at some point after you have played at least 20 times, then show your results to the teacher.
6. Now, in a Google Document placed in your biology turn-in folder, respond to the questions below about the natural selection game. Review your answers with at least two other people in class. Use their feedback to improve the accuracy and quality of your responses. The title and file name of your document should be "Who Wants to Live a Million Years: Analysis of a Natural Selection Simulation"

Questions

1. How many generations did it take for you to finally win a game? Why do you think it took this long? What do you think this means/suggests for most real species on Earth in terms of their species's chances of long-term survival?
2. Which initial phenotypes/phenotype combinations did you select and why?Which starting/initial combinations seemed to allow you to continue/survive the longest (win the most games)? Why do you think this was so?
3. Do you think this population of theoretical creatures would be greatly affected by genetic drift? What evidence of drift did you see as you played the game (simulation)?
4. Which alleles/phenotypes seemed to be dominant and which seemed to be recessive? How could you tell?
5. Match the environments/situations/conditions below with their corresponding adaptations:
   (a) cold conditions; (b) hot conditions; (c) new large predator on the scene; (d) new tall food source
6. How would you improve this simulation to more realistically represent natural selection and biological evolution? Discuss at least three improvements.

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