Fruit Fly Population Experiment

[tiagocc0]

I wanted a better source, but this will do:
(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100716175144AArkjPC)

Okay, so let's say you've performed an experiment in which three fruit flies are initially caught in a jar with air holes and a nutrient source (a banana). They are left in the jar in a warm place for three weeks. What's the rate of growth here? How many new flies would be born each day and and how many flies would there be at the end?

I had to use an excel spreadsheet to figure this one out.

Assuming your three flies are one male and two females, and that a single female lays about 20 eggs per day, and they mature and mate when they're 9 days old... and that your original flies are young enough that they're still around on day 21... and that the eggs produced are half males and half females.

Day 1: 3 flies, 40 eggs/larvae
2: 3 flies, 80 eggs/larvae
3: 3, 120
4: 3, 160
5: 3, 200
6: 3, 240
7: 3, 280
8: 3 adults, 320 eggs/larvae.

On day 9, the first young born on the banana mature and begin reproducing. From the 40 original eggs, there are roughly 20 females each producing another 20 eggs per day, 400 from the offspring and 20 from the parents, the next day 80 offspring are mature and lay 800, then 120 and 1200 etc. . Every subsequent day, another 40 flies mature and begin egg laying. The original three flies are now laying 40 eggs a day while 40 flies mature, so the total number of first generation larvae does not change anymore.

9: 43 adults, 320 first generation larvae, 400 second generation larvae
10, 83 adults, 320 first gen lavae, (400 existing +800 new =) 1200 second generation larvae
11 123 adults, 320 first gen larvae, (1200+1200)= 2400 2nd gen larvae
12 163 adults, 320 1st gen larvae (2400+1600) = 4000 2nd gen
13 203 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, (4000+2000) = 6000 second gen
14 243 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, (6000+2400) = 8400 second gen
15 283 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, (8400+2800) = 11,200 2nd gen
16 323 adults, 320 1st gen, (11,200+3200) = 14,400 2nd gen
17 363 adults, 320 1st gen, (14,400+3600) = 18,000 2nd gen

This is when it starts to get really insane. On day 18 the first offspring flies begin reproducing, making !! 4,000 !!! grandkids on day 18, 8000 on day 19, 12,000 on day 20, and 16,000 when the experiment ends on day 21.

Day 18: (363 existing + 40 new 1st gen adults + 400 2nd gen new adults ) = 803 adults, 320 1st generation larvae, (18000 + 4000 new eggs - 400 become adults) = 21,600 2nd gen larvae, and 4000 3rd generation eggs/larvae.

Day 19: 803 + 40 new 1st gen + 800 new 2nd gen adults = 1643 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, (21,600 + 4400 eggs - 800 become adults) = 25,200 2nd gen larvae, and 4000+8000 = 12000 third generation larvae.

Day 20; 1643 + 40 +1200 = 2883 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, (25,200 + 4800 eggs - 1200 adults) = 28,800 2nd gen larvae, and 12000 + 12000 = 24,000 3rd gen larvae.

Finally, day 21 you have 2883+ 40 + 1600 = 4523 adults, 320 1st gen larvae, 28,800 + 5200 eggs - 1600 adults) == 32,400 2nd gen larvae, and 24000+16000 = 40,000 3rd generation larvae.

At the end of your experiment you have around 4500 adults, and over 70,000 larvae.

Of course, the banana is completely eaten by day 10 or so, but if it's a magic banana you now have enough fruit flies to fill one of those big water cooler jugs.

So what is the meaning of this?
The meaning is that the jar will get full, there will be a jar completely full of flies. Which all of them starved to death.

Now let's think about Earth, in case we do not expand to space and our technology remains as is.
Population will grow so much, conflict will arise, wars will happen, food production will come to a halt because:
Some areas just can't produce food anymore;
Some areas were devastated because of war;
Experts in the area will die of starvation or war.

Some people think technology can/will resolve all issues.
Some people think space exploration will save us.

Now let's think about a game.
If you go to space the problem will still exist, you colonize other planets, population will rise again.
So colonize more planets. But that's assuming planets stay the same, but if the conditions to grow food on Earth were depleted, then planets have a 'lifetime' in which one day it will be useless.
So space colonization will also force the population to migrate to other planets as time passes.

If technology makes food production possible on otherwise depleted places then a planet doesn't need to be discarded.

On a game perspective this level of technology should appear only in a very late game.

Imagine a game where when you start your home planet is already fucked up.
You HAVE to colonize other worlds or die.

As you grow your empire, you also speedy up the process of 'killing planets'.
Your empire will start to move in the galaxy as you dry planets of resources.

Now we have a very good reason to expand and make wars, instead of making a fucking good home planet and attacking everyone just for the sake of winning a completely nonsense goal of being the last surviving species for the sake of it.

In midgame most stars of the star cluster (about a thousand stars) you live in are completely useless.
The most advanced races will now start to discover advanced planet revitalization techniques or advanced resource extraction techniques. Why mine a planet when you can mine a star? Things like that.

So the already used stars starts to get colonized again.
And now you have a completely different end game to play.
A decent mid game reason to expand and fight.
And early game should be about securing good stars for you to rely on later instead of just colonizing completely useless planets so they can pay you taxes.

 

[Malakal]

The problem is advanced societies do not reproduce enough to maintain their population or experience a small growth at best. Most games base on the assumption that populations maintain their growth rate no matter how advanced they are, or even grow faster due to tech advances.

So in order to make space exploration necessary we have to take out the natural slowing population growth and replace it with infinite growth demanding new planets that are colonizable.

I could wager that IRL we would never estabilish a colony outside of our solar system because there wont be need for that.

 

[Malakal]

Also is it even possible to feasibly drain a planet of all resources? Certain ones definitely, even if we recycle, but most minerals and metals are abundant enough to never really be exhaustible.

For game purposes I would divide resources into resources with infinite supply (common metals and minerals, energy) and rarer resources that may be exhausted (radioactive elements that tend to be exceedingly rare).

 

[tiagocc0]

But games usually have infinite growth, right?
Or do you mean a planet population would grow more than the limit causing overpopulation requiring then new planets.

It's an interesting approach because if you do not get more planets soon your population may get angry and revolt.


Resources will get depleted on the level we are able to mine\acquire them.
New techs would be necessary for you to get resources again. So while you don't have the tech the planet is useless.

 

[Average Manatee]

The problem is advanced societies do not reproduce enough to maintain their population or experience a small growth at best. Most games base on the assumption that populations maintain their growth rate no matter how advanced they are, or even grow faster due to tech advances.

This is entirely cultural though. There's nothing to prevent you from going out there and impregnating a dozen fertile women every day, other than the basement-dweller thing. And if interstellar colonization became feasible there is no reason China wouldn't immediately lift it's one child policy and immediately start with the galaxy dominance. Nevermind what will happen if we discover immortality-granting stem cells or genetic modification or some age-reversal drug at some point.

Also is it even possible to feasibly drain a planet of all resources? Certain ones definitely, even if we recycle, but most minerals and metals are abundant enough to never really be exhaustible.

Depends on your level of technology. If you are at the level of Dyson Sphere technology then you'll be running out of everything.

 

[Norfleet]

And if interstellar colonization became feasible there is no reason China wouldn't immediately lift it's one child policy and immediately start with the galaxy dominance.

Yeah, China's having kind of a problem with that, though. They've basically attempted to retract the policy, but as it turns out, now it has become cultural and people no longer WANT to spam children. Historically, no policy has ever successfully convinced people to have MORE children than they actually want to have. China has sort of hit a point from which it is difficult to return from: The people who grew up under this policy now consider it a norm and do not wish to make more.

 

[Destroid]

We need an economics intended for stable populations instead of infinite growth of activity, resources and labour units.

 

[tiagocc0]

We need an economics intended for stable populations instead of infinite growth of activity, resources and labour units.

I'm planning on a finite grow of an empire.
You can only grow so much before it starts to collapse, so not more one empire controls half of the galaxy.
A player could try but it would be very difficult to maintain a very big empire in one piece.

With limited grow you have limited resources, you have to plan where to colonize, how to colonize instead of just grabbing everything you can as fast as you can.

Generally games tend to make it hard to expand too quickly, but after you get your planets developed you can keep expanding. So it doesn't really help.
You can expect several small empires actually coming out of a really big empire, pieces that it couldn't control or didn't want to control anymore.

This also makes alliances much more interesting.
Why should I have an ally if I can just conquer him and get all of his resources? Because now you can get all of his resources, after you expand to your limit you need to make alliances as to expand your area of influence.

 

[tuluse]

Are you going to have the ability to spawn off vassals?

 

[tiagocc0]

Are you going to have the ability to spawn off vassals?

This is planned, also dangerous.
There is nothing greater for a vassal than conquering their masters.

 

[Malakal]

If you make administrating an empire hard enough then it may be the limiting factor as it was in history. Administrative burdens are always overlooked in games. Look at the Foundation series where the capital planet (Trantor?) was just one huge city filled with officials and was facing huge challenges due to that - supply of food for example.

Centralized government should be hard to run and decentralized one should be dangerous (civil wars, vassal rebellions, think feudalism in space).

 

[SCO]

Decentralized government is dangerous for other reasons too. Namely corruption, and race to the bottom self-interest. Of course, that is bad for the people (in the long run), but not for the overlords.

 

[tiagocc0]

One thing I would to develop is that in the end game empires will start to shrink instead of increasing, but population would stay the same.
One way to do that was the creating of an artificial world. The size of a gas giant where it would be populated on the outside and on the inside all the way to the core.
So if you can have for example 30 billion pop on a large planet you could have 300 billion pop on this artificial world, just throwing numbers.
What would actually happen is that people would move to these artificial worlds. They would need to keep colonies for mining and research purposes but those would become more and more automated and thus the population these would decreases with new techs.

Just a random idea.

 

[tiagocc0]

That's very interesting, it gave me some neat ideas.
I will read those links too, thanks! Later I will post what I came up with.

 

[glorious jim]

You HAVE to colonize other worlds or die.

that's true but more because of the eventual death of our star and massive disasters like asteroids and supervolcanos, not overpopulation

populations stabilize. barring awesome memes like mormonism, which compel their adherents to procreate as much as possible, people tend to start having less children once their quality of life improves past a certain level. putting more resources into fewer eggs becomes a better strategy, even to the point of sub-replacement birth rates. the extreme of this trend is japan

 

[tiagocc0]

That's assuming their quality of life improves.
Also alien species may act entirely differently.

Even if population stabilizes here on Earth, being able to colonize another world may just allow population to go on a rise again on that colony.
In MoO2 the best optimal population grow is when you have 50% of the max population. So you have less population grow before you reach 50% and after you reach 50%. Which goes with this theory of stabilization.

But you have to colonize other worlds because you will consume whatever you can on that planet given your current technology.
You have two choices, you can improve your technology to be able to exploit more of your world or you can colonize other worlds.

In the game you will probably have to colonize other planets before you reach a certain level of tech so you can use more of those planets, that means that you will be able to go back to colonized planets after you acquire the given tech and make it productive again.

In other words if you stay in just one planet you will reach a limit where you do not have enough resources to sustain a reasonable quality of life for everyone, even if it was already stabilized, then when quality of life drops your population will start to regress, many will die and your population will start to grow again but now your entire planet is in conflict. Not because resources about to end and everyone is about to die, but because they can't maintain the high level quality of life they are used to.

This will impact directly on your research slowing it down and making you unable to reach that point in technology where you can exploit your world again as much as you were used to.

This could lead to three outcomes:
1. Your population stabilizes again and gets used to this new low quality of life, thus you become a secondary species instead of a major player.
2. War starts, your population gets decimated. Most or all of them dies, if some survives they go back to their primitive state.
3. You overcome this problem with another solution, your research goes back to normal, you become a major player with an interesting twist.

Option 3 could be the background of one of the major races.
Option 1 could be the background of one of the minor races.
Option 2 could be the background of an event where you find a planet with artifacts and primitive life.