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[l2]
We continue on from the last SUPERBUG experiment.
SUPERBUG scenarios focused on predator-predator 
competition with the goal of having your bug being the
last fighting bug standing and thus winnig the game.
KING OF BEASTS explores the web of life. The
object of the scenarios here is to be the top 
predator in a viable eco system. In a viable eco-
system there is at least one species in the plant
kingdom that converts the environmental energy to
plant life. There is at least one herbivore 
species that lives on the plants and one carnivore
species that lives on the herbivores. 
The KING OF BEASTS experiment first explores how
to build a viable eco system. You are taken 
through three experiments that let you create a
collapsing, semi- stable and then stable simple food 
chain (1 plant, 1 herbivore, 1 carnivore). You
will experience the chaotic nature of an eco system,
the feast and famine cycles of survival, the ever
rising and falling populations, and ways to 
manipulate species toward extinction or stable
existence.
After that the next experiment set brings
in the second predator and demonstrates how a web
of life can be created by having species fill eco
system niches.
To see a pictorial model of the food chain click on MORE.

[l2_1]
OK, we start out with the same species, and the 
same genetic settings we created in the last
superbug experiment. Now we focus on the bottom
of the food chain, i.e. the plants. A close
look shows that the plant ENERGY GAIN genetic
variable is set to 0, meaning  that there's nothing for
the herbivores to eat, so they die, then the carnivores
die. The plants are "the" agents for pumping energy
into the system. We want to start by pumping 
a lot of energy in at first. This'll result in 
herbivore population explosion, followed by
carnivore population explosion which if big 
enough will force the herbivores to go extinct.
That is our goal for this experiment. In the
following experiments we'll manage the populations
thereby achieving a stable food chain.
Trial and error has showed that 150 CEUs is
certainly a lot, so change the plant's ENERGY
GAIN value to 150.
If you click on more you will see a plot of
populations over time. The population of the
herbivores in a typical food chain will rise
and fall in time(called a cycle), with the 
carnivore populations following it. This eco 
system should collapse in a few cycles. 


[l2_2]
OK the last experiment gave us a beginning,
a system that is unstable and that will collapse
because the carnivore population exploded in each
cycle, i.e.  too much energy is being pumped into
the carnivore population. There are several ways of
controlling the population cycles. The quickest way
 is to  go right to the source. Our strategy is to ease 
back  on the energy to the carnivores, i.e. they 
eat herbivores, so we don't make the herbivores 
so fat and juicy. The herbivore energy size, or weight ,
is controlled by INITIAL ENERGY and BIRTHING
ENERGY variables. Again trial and error shows 
that if we reduce their INITIAL ENERGY to 500
, from 2000 CEUs, and reduce their BIRTH ENERGY
to 1000, from 4000 CEU's, we should get good 
results. So go ahead and do that.
If you click on more it'll give you the 
population plot of my experiment as I reduce 
the size (energy) of the herbivores.

[l2_3]
OK that last experiment was a move in the right
direction, but the herbivore population still
dropped too low compared to the carnivores. It
might even go extinct if runs into some bad luck
(see the plots from the last experiment). A stable
system should have a healthy herbivore population
that is consistently several times the population
of the carnivores. So, we'll use another genetic
tool, the ENERGY DISSIPATION of the carnivores.
That's the quickest way to work on our problem.
We're happy with the herbivore population, just
want to ease up on the carnivore population. So,
we'll make the carnivores leaner, that'll cull
the heard in question alone (more'll starve to
death in the lean times, even in times of plenty
the leaner ones will go leaner faster and fall
prey to the bigger healthier ones, in any case
trust me it'll work). So increase the kill star
ENERGY DISSIPATION to 8, from 0. This should
give us a stable simple food chain.
Click on more to see the plot of my trial runs.

[l2_4]
OK, last experiment was fine, but we want to play KING 
OF BEASTS, meaning we need another carnivore to 
compete with. We got one, it's just that it's not much of a 
competition. We can do a number of things with it, but
the thing to do is to give it it's own niche. Our kill stars 
are small(energetically) and  fast, we'll make the jfish 
slow and big. Their hunting style will be to strike when the
prey is close, so they'll eat well when populations are
large and will wait out the lean times since they are big.
And because they are the biggest bugs they must control their
own populations, so we'll  make'em fratricidal.
So change the jfish parameters:
VELOCITY, from 6 to 3
INITIAL ENERGY from 700 to 3000
BIRTHING ENERGY from 1400 to 6000
ENERGY DISSIPATION from 5 to 0
BEHAVIOR from 3 to 2 (3 is CANNIBAL, 2 FRATRICIDAL)

When I ran this, the kill stars were barely stable and 
eventually died out so I set their ENERGY DISSIPATION 
to 0, from 8. So do that too.

This should give us a reasonably stable web.
To see my experiment's population plots click 
on more.



