The first thing we had to do for the activity was to predict the out come of the ecological population over a 100 day window. The prediction that my group made was that one plant would end up killing off the other species of plant Shown above is the how the population of the plants started out--50% plant A and 50% plant B.
We assumed that this happened because plant A grew over plant B and over time shaded all of the sunlight from plant B which then killed off the plant.
The picture above shows the beginning of the second exercise. Herbivore A was introduced into the environment. Herbivore A only eats plant A. We predicted that plant A would be completely wiped out by Herbivore A which in turn would kill off Herbivore A because of the lack of food.
We were very surprised by the outcome of the environment. The end result was that Herbivore A created a perfect balance between the two plant species.
The last part of this lab was a challenge: are we able to create a balanced system including all of the given animal life?
The food web above shows the ecosystem with all of the connection connected. The challenge presented to us was to create system so all of the animals and plants live. It took a lot of trail and error to find the best possible system to sustain all life.
The picture above is what the unbalanced system looks like after being run.
With the food web we created we found that plant C died very rapidly. To make sure this didn't happen any more we made no herbivores eat plant C
The changed food web is as shown above. Top predator does not feed on two of the three herbivores, and the three herbivores do not eat plant C.
After we made these changes it allowed all of the life to be present in a relatively balance form
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