S2E05.1 - Harmonies and Planet (Ecological Niches)

#Harmonies #PlanetGame #Ecology #NichePartitioning #BoardGames #Science

We have a short bonus episode today, going over two science-inspired games, Harmonies and Planet. Both of these games touch on ecology and what animals need in their environment, but in a very science-light manner. We talk about niche partitioning, compare and contrast the games, and even have a cool science fact about trees using lightning to kill their neighbors.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:06 Trees weaponizing lightning
• 03:54 Harmonies overview
• 08:31 Planet overview
• 12:25 Compare and contrast
• 17:24 Humans and vertebrate bias
• 19:39 Niche specialization
• 22:53 No science grades
• 24:18 Fun grades

Links

• Harmonies official site (Libellud)
• Planet official site (Blue Orange Games)
• Tonka bean trees survive lightning (LiveScience.com)
• Interview with Harmonies creator (Youtube, French)
  • Translated and cleaned transcript

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This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Full Transcript

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Brian  0:05   Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games.

Brian  0:11   In today's bonus episode, we're going to discuss harmonies by Libellud

Jason  0:15   and planet by blue, orange games. 

Brian  0:18   hey, I'm Brian. 

Jason  0:19   This is Jason.

Brian  0:20   It's just the two of us. Welcome to a bonus episode anyway. So we're supposed to take a break midway through the season, and we have this is  gonna be a bonus episode. It's gonna be a little weird. We're talking about two games today, harmonies and planet. These games are similar. I've decided that these games are, instead of being based on a true story, they're inspired by a true story. Both of these have a strong nature theme, but it you know, they weren't really trying to directly model anything in science. They just sort of did it by accident. 

Jason  0:52   and they're both completely coincidentally French,

Brian  0:56   and have a lot of other similarities too, in terms of overall mechanics and also having some some fun gimmicks associated with them, you actually have a science fact. So, you know, it's a bonus episode, but what's your science fact? 

Jason  1:08   This was some research that came out about trees in the Panama rainforest. Relevant, because this is all about ecology and plants competing well. So it turns out that tall trees in the rainforest get struck by lightning a lot, and it's actually thought to be one of the major contributors to tree mortality, to killing the tall trees and then opening up space. Well, turns out there's this one species of tree called a tonka bean tree, that apparently just survives lightning unscathed. 

Brian  1:35   What? 

Jason  1:36   but lightning strikes kill all of the parasitic vines on it, or most of them, and a lot of it's nearby competitors, and so it may actually be using the lightning strikes as a way of gaining a competitive advantage. They did research over time, looking at looking exactly where lightning struck, looking at the trees before and after, looking at long historical records. And apparently, for other trees, being next to a tonka bean tree is actually a very high risk for mortality. You are likely to die next to one of them, presumably because getting struck by lightning and kind of using that to kill you.

Brian  2:06   This is the strangest thing to imagine, having a selective advantage. This is so bizarre. 

Brian  2:06   Well, think about it, though, like lightning generally strikes the tallest thing, and in a rainforest, it's always a game of trying to reach the light, and so lots of trees are benefited from getting really tall, but if a lightning strike comes by and hits you, then you're dead. And so I don't know, I think there's actually a decent selective advantage of like, Hey, if you can survive lightning, great. And then, because presumably, if you get struck by lightning, a lot of that cur