Meeting Abstract
In collaboration with the software designer arludo, we developed a novel game-based, approach to teaching key concepts in evolution – including natural selection, performance and energetic trade-offs, and foraging strategies. In this app, students become the predators in a game that simulates encounters between predators and prey. Students observe how the actions of the predators (themselves) affect the frequency of escape speeds of prey and the rate of this change across generations. In essence, students can observe how their prowess as predators affects the evolution of escape speeds in a simulated population of prey. To do this, students are asked to ‘capture’ simulated on-screen prey (dots on screen) that move across the computer’s screen (varying population size) by touching them on the tablet’s screen. The better one is at hitting the prey on screen (eating them) the fewer individuals that will remain in the population. Only those individuals that escape being captured get the opportunity to breed and produce offspring for the next generation. We are then able to vary (i) population size, (ii) mean and variance of speed for the prey (in the first generation), (iii) agility of prey, and the (iv) trade-off between speed and agility, and then observe the consequences of these factors. Because success in the game is based on the accumulation of energy, by varying the energetic benefits of capturing prey and the costs of attempting to capture prey, one can also assess how the best predator strategy changes with energetic constraints. This app is useful for both demonstrating the simplicity of natural selection to non-scientists and for higher-level science students than are able to design their own experiments by varying traits and energetic constraints in the game and then observing the outcomes.
