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Catrina Mueller's picture

Catrina Mueller and Rachel Mabe

Generally, things in nature tend to come to an equalibrium at some point or else something will "die out". With the ants, even when all the ants started in the same job, the ants eventually reached the 50%/25%/25% proportions. When disturbances such as extra hydrocarbons were added, eventally the proportions reached equalibrium, despite the fact that there were "dummy ants". For the bunny/weed/grass simulation, either the bunnies and plants reached equalibrium or all the rabbits died out.

Even though the ants moved randomly, there was always a 50%/25%/25% ratio, which makes it seem like they the ants were moving with intention. In fact, this ratio is the most probable, as the ants are less likely to bump into the set amount of ants when they are the most spread out. Likewise, for the rabbit simulation, as long as the rabbits, weeds, and grass were not messed with, the rabbit population eventually became stable (or else died out), despite the fact that the rabbits moved freely and randomly.

For the ants, we did not understand why the older colonies had a sense of "collective wisdom" and bounced back more quickly from adversity. This happened in every situation where the ants were faced with a test: the older colonies seemed to react more efficiently.

The rabbits seemed to make more sense. No matter how much energy and the amount of plants that were avaliable, the rabbit population could stabilize (as long as there were enough plants to initially support them).

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