Across a variety of professional fields, the use of population modeling has been used to demonstrate a variety of explanations. For example, scientists can demonstrate a mathematical model to represent the population dynamics or genetic drift of a particular environment over the years. Population modeling has been used to mathematically, psychologically and scientifically demonstrate an understanding of numbers (used) over time (measured) and can be manipulated by changing their generation and rate. Both labs are completed through the use of a laptop and Excel workbook provided to students in the biology lab. Through this experiment, students will use an already set Excel workbook and the well-known Monte Carlo simulations of allele frequencies that constitute the observance of different growth parameters which, provided in this week's laboratory protocol, are: exponential growth, growth logistics, and the “predator-prey simulation” (Dulai), as well as generations. To see the difference in growths and generation/allele manipulations, students are asked to manipulate the values; for example the initial population or the rate value. This is done to observe what each manipulation of the numbers does to the graph. In completing the experiment, the students discovered that each model has high sensitivity when changing the values provided. By comparing each model, students were able to observe the importance of manipulating a value leading to an overall change in its population. This also helped locate the month of steady state and the rate at which the population/rate was stable; thus, demonstrating the expected mortality rate, the initial predator population, and the population predation rate. Also, the... center of the paper... the control variable. It was further hypothesized that when the variables a,A were manipulated, the resulting numbers would also increase. Materials and methods The materials used in this laboratory experiment were as follows:1. Microsoft XP2 laptop. Excel3 spreadsheet workbook. Pencil/pen4. Python interpreter5. Allele Frequency Software The materials, procedures, and experimental methods used in labs eight and nine were implemented from a protocol previously provided to biology lab students by Dr. Kamal Dulai (Dr. Dulai, 2014). Both labs have been combined in a PDF provided by Dr. Dulai in the UC Merced CROPS folder. The deviation for this lab was that the extra credit predator-prey phase plots were not performed during the designated time frame for the lab and were instead completed at the student's discretion (after the lab).
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