PartnerRoundMcKinsey Solve · practice simulation
Ecosystem Building
A wind-scoured upland of heather, scree and small tarns. Six survey sites have been staked out across it, and you will establish a single ecosystem at one of them. Choose eight species that can live together there, and keep as many of them alive as the eating rules allow.
- Time
- 35 min
- Species
- 8 of 21
- Monitors
- 4 of 7
- Scores
- 2
The clock runs from the moment you start.
How it runs
Study the guidebook
21 species, each with its calories, its diet and the conditions it can live in.Switch on 4 of 7 monitors
Monitors read the conditions at whichever site you pick. A monitor cannot be switched off, so decide what matters first.Choose one of 6 sites
Survey sites are marked on a map of the Tarnmoor Plateau. Compare their readings before you commit.Pick 3 producers and 5 animals
Then submit. Your ecosystem is run through the eating rules and scored on how many species survive.
The eating rules
They are repeated inside the test, next to your selection.
- 1A species only establishes at a site where every reading it has a range for falls inside that range. One that does not establish neither eats nor feeds anything.
- 2Producers never eat. The animal with the highest current calories provided eats first; a tie goes in guidebook order.
- 3It eats from whichever of its food sources currently provides the most calories. If two or more are level, it takes an equal share from each.
- 4Whatever it eats comes off that food source's calories provided, and stays off for the rest of the run.
- 5If that source runs out before the animal has all the calories it needs, it moves on to its next richest food source, and so on.
- 6Then the animal with the next highest current calories provided eats.
- 7An animal whose calories provided have already fallen to zero has been eaten out and does not take its turn.
- 8A species survives if it ends with its calories needed fully met and more than zero calories provided.
How it is scored
Product score
How many species survive
Against the best any ecosystem can manage at your site.
Process score
How you got there
Whether your monitors covered what your species depend on, whether you read each species before adding it, and whether you compared sites.