Who Wants to Live a Million Years: Analysis of a Natural Selection Simulation

1. After playing 5 games, my mutations lived 100,000,00 years. I think it took so long because you have to find out which mutations work together well and feed off each others strongest traits. In real life, I think this means that without some species on this earth, others would not be able to survive. I think this because not one species is perfect, they can’t adapt to every environment, so there needs to be a balance.
2. At first, I selected the same exact species, but soon realized that I need 2 to 3 different ones. The first time I won I chose long neck, bulky, and stripped. Long neck is good for getting food off of branches, bulky is good for cold weather, and stripped can camouflage. These three mutations worked well together because each one has traits that benefit the other mutations.
3. I do think this population would be greatly affected by genetic drift  because the mutations rely on each other. One example of genetic drift I saw, was when one of the mutations died off due to random weather conditions.
4. Long necks was dominant and the long legs were recessive. The majority of mutations had long necks and the not many mutations carried the long leg attribute.
5. Cold conditions- they got bulkie; hot conditions- they became thinner and less furry; new large predator- mutations used camouflage; tall food source- their necks became longer to reach the food
6. One improvement I would make, would be to add other coexisting organisms. I would also include more than one food source. Finally, I would add more environmental changes.