The experiment population has been pre-adolescents between the ages of 8 and 12 without any cognitive issues.
To estimate the response to selection of each nominal genetic diversity level over the course of the experiment, population sizes in the stressful and permissive environments were compared three weeks (~1 full reproductive cycle) after the environmental stress was introduced and at the end of the experiment (~3 reproductive cycles later).
The chemostat is bathed in light of a constant and uniform intensity, I, and is maintained at a constant temperature, T. In the standard experiment, populations of phytoplankton cells injected into the chemostat are monitored whilst the environmental chemostat parameters are carefully controlled.
It is expected that low-density populations would still grow during the course of the experiment whereas populations with higher densities would have a slower growth, and those at carrying capacity would stop growing - or just stay in a balance between cell mortality and division.
In the course of the experiment, their populations improved threefold.
The range of values of seed oil content was greater for the multilocal experiment (20.0 31.6%) than for the experiment on populations (22.0 28.8%), but the effect of the agricultural year was noticed in both experiments.
In the 14-day experiment, population growth was slightly higher than in the 32-day experiment, but the differences among treatments confirmed the pattern observed in the 32-day experiment.
For the bottleneck experiments, populations with an effective size of 3,000 individuals were simulated, and experienced a bottleneck of the same magnitude as in the in-vitro experiments.
For the migration experiments, populations with an effective size of 3,000 individuals were simulated, exchanging migrants at the same rate as in the laboratory experiments.
Consequently, at the end of the experiment, the population rate of increase was higher in uranium than in salt and intermediate in the alternating environment.
