This program models a population of a hypothetical animal on a 2-D grid of habitat cells. Each cell tracks two life stages — resident adults that reproduce and dispersing juveniles that spread to neighbouring cells. You control life-history factors (birth rate, life span, dispersal rate) and two sources of mortality: habitat fragmentation (walls that block dispersal and degrade their neighbours) and random short-term events (local catastrophes).

The original project used it to ask which factors most push a species toward extinction — finding that reproductive rate mattered more than starting population size, life span barely mattered, and that dispersal could help or hurt depending on the kind of stress.

Science fair project & model by Andrew Cantino (2000). Port of the RealBASIC source by Claude.