The Imaginary Fish Lab

          When simulating alleles in a fish population, many alters occur over time.  The purpose of this scientific project was to show how an offspring is developed by the mating of a male and a female. Basically, it is formed by the combination of a male's sperm and the female's eggs. In this scenario, each allele symbolizes the color of the fish. It just so happens that a green colored (allele) is dominant over all other alleles which include red alleles, and yellow alleles. Interesting, both red alleles and yellow alleles are incompletely dominant  to eachother and produce a third  blending phenotype of orange. At the start of the lab, there was 24 alleles in the gene pool. 1/3 of the alleles were green, 1/3 were red, and 1/3 were yellow. To start off with, we had to make a first generation of imaginary fish. To do this, we had to take out 12 pairs of genes(toothpicks) from a genepool(plastic cup)(randomly) with our eyes closed and set them side by side. We used Direct Observation and counted the members of the population one by one. The gene pairs resulted into various fish colors. The group of investigators determined that approximately 58% of the population was green, 17% was red, 8% was yellow, and 17% was orange due to incomplete dominance combinations. Therefore, there was 7 green fish, 2 red fish, 1 yellow fish, and 2 orange fish. In the lush, green territory where the fish live, there are also many vicious predators in their surroundings. This area is home to lots of seaweed and algae. The fish can camaflouge themselves well and can adapt to the environment. However, unfortunately the yellow fish are visible targets and all of them failed to survive. Due to these extreme impacts, there was a dramatic drop in the fish population for the second generation. In this time period of fish, data suggests that there is now 11 fish in the pond. The aqua environment consists of about 63% green fish, 9% red fish, 18%, and 9% orange fish. These percents sum up to be 99% and not a full 100%, but this is an estimate using a scientific calculator. Hence, seven fish are green, 1 fish is red, 2 fish are yellow, and 1 fish is orange. Suddenly, because of their lack of strength, the yellow fish were once again eaten by predators. In the third generation, it is analyzed that there are 9 fish in all. 56% are green fish, 33% are red fish, 11% are yellow fish, and 0% are orange fish. In other words, there are 5 green fish, 3 red fish, 1 yellow fish, and 0 orange fish. This set of data proves that an orange offspring wasn't processed in the 3rd generation. Finally, the yellow fish are once again eaten by the predators and all of the yellow's have died out. All in all, the 1st through 3rd generations of the multiplicity of fish has been very intense and has been influenced by many external wild creatures. This is has lead to a large decrease in population size.

          In the 4th generation of fish, there is a total of 8 fish which include of 6 green fish and 2 red fish. This is 75% green fish, and 25% red fish. Abruptly, there is an environmental disaster in the living space of the fish. Harmful factory waste is poored into the body of water and kills seaweed and algae. The remaining fish are able to expose themselves to the attack, however the green fish are viewed easily and are eaten by predators. Sadly, in the end, there were only 2 red fish survivors. Interestingly, in the whole project, 20 alleles from the fish population has disappeared entirely and there evolution has come to an end. The recent disaster was massive and without this, the green fish population would've been living on for many more generations. The predators were biotic limiting factors because they were living features of the ecosystem that limited the population size of the fish. The red fish were the only survivors. An example of natural selection is that the the final 2 red fish had traits that enabled them to adapt to the environmental pressure of the "factory waste disaster" and the predators. This stream environment which was used by the fish was expressed as very deadly and unsafe. Ecology explains that an ecosystem is a space where a community of organisms live, interact, and have reactions. Some interactions include Parasatism, Commensalism, and Mutualism. These interactions are part of Symbiosis which simply means there is a relationship in which two different organisms live in close association with each other. One way to change how the lab went would be to make it impossible for any fish to be alive. Then, everyone in Omega would be pondering and examining how to keep a fish alive. You could make it impossible and trick everyone that there is a way to get atleast one survivor so you could get their brains thinking. On the other hand, you could make all the yellow fish go through resurrection at the end of the experiment, and that would surprise everyone that the yellow fish came back alive. The genotype for the final 2 red alleles are (rr) and it won't be capable of reproducing to make a green. This is because the traits of the alleles are homozygous, and it is recessive to Green(which is represented as a dominant (G)). Also, because there are no more yellow fish, it is not possible to create an orange fish. If yellow fish were alive, the red fish and the yellow fish would be incompletely dominant to eachother and they would be capable of blending to make an orange fish. Below are possible combinations of alleles which were demonstrated through the generations in this case.

GG=Green

Gr=Green

Gy=Green

rr=Red

yy=Yellow

ry=Orange

          Overall, the lab went really well and was very interesting. It taught me a lot about the traits of genetic creatures such as a fish. It was fun to do it as a partner activity and I look forward to doing another project like this again.