MathBench > Population Dynamics

Mystery of the Missing Housefly

You be the detective

“But don't you see?” I said. “Without the banana, the other flies would be too pooped to…, well, you get the picture.”

“Yes, she said, “It's a graph with two axis and a line that zigs up and down. I guess there's no real mystery at all.”

I grabbed the two Benjamins off my desk and slipped them into my shirt pocket. “Right, but I'll still keep these for expenses.”

“Fair enough,” she said. And flew out of my life, forever.

And here is a final applet: your job is to discover the actual form of population dynamics underlying the dynamics of Ms. Domestica's descendants. In other words, solve the Mystery of the Missing Housefly.

Directions:

Use the checkboxes to decide which of the 3 variants you want to use (you can use some, all, or none) and the sliders to control maximum growth rate, carrying capacity, yearly course of carrying capacity, and frequency of disturbance, as appropriate. When you think you've gotten the model to match the actual dynamics pretty well, press "reveal" to see what model the program was using.