Analysis of the "Botany of Desire" introduction

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/bees-get-a-buzz-out-of-electricity-from-flowers

  Today, through my reading the introduction of the book "Botany of Desire", I learned a different perspective of our relationship with nature. In contrast to our traditional perspective of being the dominant species, the author introduced a new idea of co-evolutionary relationship. Just like how flowers use their colorful character to attract bees in order to spread their pollen, plants exploit our inner desire and influence our preferences through their tastes and appearances. 

http://cdn.oxwordsblog.wpfuel.co.uk/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/apple-e1382039006457.jpg

  In the introduction, the author provided examples like apple, tulip, cannabis and potato to support his statement. Apple exploit our desire with its sweetness; tulip exploit our desire with its beauty; cannabis exploit our desire through intoxication; potato exploit our desire with its taste. Also, these four plants are known as domesticated plants, which sounds ironic since the plants are the ones who manipulated our desire and developed an advanced strategy through evolution, in order to make themselves popular in human agriculture. 

http://www.emol.com/noticias/tecnologia/2012/01/17/522007/paleontologo-encuentra-trabajos-olvidados-de-charles-darwin.html

  Even though the perspective sounds novel and unique, the idea can be traced to Charles Darwin, the man who found theory of evolution. In the first chapter of his famous paper Origin of Species, Darwin introduced a term "artificial selection", which meant our choice in selecting domesticated species, that reflects on our will. He described that our desire plays the same role as the natural selection in determining the best species for survival, but he didn't foresee the trend of how artificial selection has now become the most powerful force of nature, and even stronger than natural selection.

"Human Imprint", Photo credit to Cheker Andouni, Source URL: http://500px.com/photo/21128787/human-imprint-by-cheker-amdouni

  Our relationship with nature has been interpreted in many different ways throughout history. However, this idea of reciprocal relationship has put us back into the nature's web. Instead of thinking of us as the dominant species on Earth, we should also admire the power of nature that induces us to select the best plants for survival, because perhaps in the eyes of nature, we're not that different from those bees. 

- Andy Liu '15

Graph analysis of wolf-rabbit simulation lab

  Today we did a simulation lab of predators and preys in class. The purpose of the lab is to find out the relations between number of predators and number of preys in a specific environment, and we used wolfs and rabbits as our subjects. We used large and small cards as our wolves and rabbits. In the first round, 1 large card and 3 small cards are put into the environment. Each time a wolf card is put into the environment, it has to touch three rabbit cards in order to reproduce, while the rabbit cards continue to reproduce each round. Here is our data after 10 rounds of simulation.

 As you can see, the number of wolves didn't grow until the 5th round, while the number of rabbits shows a significant increase during the first 5 rounds. The decrease in number of rabbits didn't start until the 7th round, which is when we begin to see a larger increase in number of wolves. I believe that this represents that the number of predators is directly proportional to number of preys in the beginning, but becomes more indirectly proportional as the number of preys begins to decrease while number of predators is rising.

-Andy Liu '15

Natural Disaster blog of Savanna biome -- Link Here!

Here's the link to my blog of what African savannas will look like if global temperature rises. Thanks!

-Andy Liu '15

My Biome Travel Blog

  Here's the link to my travel blog of Seregenti savanna in Tanzania, East Africa. Thanks!

- Andy Liu '15