"Reef Survivor" Board Game - University Edition

This game can be used at a number of different educational levels from lower-level undergraduate "Life through Time" or "History of Life of Earth" classes to upper-level undergraduate or even graduate classes on Paleontology, Sedimentology, Oceanography, Conservation, or Marine Biology.

Before gameplay, students should have a basic knowledge of marine communities, evolution, and environmental changes in coastal ecosystems. The game is most effective in a group of students who are excited about ocean ecosystems or board games.

This activity is designed to replace or take place in a 2-hour lab period (although we provide instructions for shortening/lengthening the activity.
The game takes approximately 1.5-2 hours to play, although depending on how engaged and competitive the players are it can take between one and two hours; thus, we suggest guaranteeing two hours for gameplay (especially the first time it is played). That said, the game is highly modifiable.

As an educational tool, the game has twelve student learning objectives, or SLOs about evolution, ecology, biodiversity, and extinction.

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

SLO #1: Formulate a strategy to maintain reef function and biodiversity given the factors one might encounter during the game. Engage in complex systems thinking.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: The students who complete the onboarding worksheet and plan their strategy in advance are more likely to do well when they play the game.

Evolution

SLO #2: Identify the ways in which genetic variation increases in a community (i.e., mutation and migration).

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: The only way to add variation to the reef community is to gain a new characteristic (mutation) or exchange juvenile organisms with other players (migration).

SLO#3: Explain that genetic mutations are random and can be either harmful, helpful, or neutral.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Mutations are random; students select an organism to mutate and roll a die for the mutation (e.g., heat/cold tolerant, stronger/weaker skeleton). Players may get a positive, negative, or neutral mutation; the benefit or drawback of the mutation may not be apparent until a particular environmental event.

SLO#4: Genetic mutations are inherited by offspring from their parents.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Parents produce offspring with the same genetic mutations in the reproduction phase.

SLO#5: Understand that organisms or communities cannot "prepare for" environmental changes or evolve before a selective pressure is exerted. Natural selection is not necessarily directional (i.e., one round it may be hot and another it may be cool), nor does mutation act for the "good of the species".

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Mutations happen before the environmental event, so the player cannot plan for what's coming. Strategy comes down to maximizing reef diversity (e.g., trading juveniles to have both hot and acid-tolerant species) and placing organisms in the best spots based on their characteristics (e.g., strong corals in environments with high energy).

Ecology

SLO#6: Identify the different organisms that live in and build reefs and explain some of their environmental preferences. Understand that benthic adults may have planktic juveniles.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Reef organisms include a variety of different species with variable characteristics and habitats; students select their starting organisms. Once selected and placed reef builders cannot move (sessile, benthic organisms), but their juveniles and the reef dwellers can move (motile planktic and benthic, respectively).

SLO#7: Explain how local environment and bathymetric profile (i.e., antecedent bathymetry) may change the ecology of a reef community.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Students select a game board with a particular geographical layout and bathymetry; they discover that some organisms do better in deeper water and others in shallower water etc. Also, environmental events impact different game board layouts uniquely

SLO#8: Become familiar with ecological niches and competition. Some organisms act as reef builders, some are reef dwellers, and some damage healthy reefs.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Board has limited space, some organisms perform the same ecosystem services or occupy the same niches (e.g. builder, dweller). When students run out of space, they have to start prioritizing certain taxa and not every species can live in all environments nor recruit dwellers that eat off fleshy algae.

SLO#9: Defend or explain why higher diversity is important for the health and long term survival of reef communities and reef ecosystems.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Usually a more diverse reef (both multiple species and a greater intra-specific variation with multiple different mutations) is the best strategy to keep the reef healthy over long timescales.

Biodiversity & Extinction

SLO#10: Calculate the diversity of an area or community and how diversity changes through time (how do we identify extinctions).

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Through choice and chance, different boards and different tables will have unique communities, just like ecosystems in the natural world. Students can calculate the diversity of the board at a given interval and track how it changes through time.

SLO#11: Understand that environmental conditions change through time and geological time is long.

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: The game is played over 4 million years (and can be modified to be played for longer time periods)

SLO#12: Understand that communities can be decimated by extinction drivers (e.g., climate change) but tolerance of a particular stressor (e.g., heat) can help some taxa survive these events (differential survival leading to natural selection).

• Game Mechanic that Addresses Objective: Students see several unique environmental events, which have differential impacts on their reef community depending on their composition; this leads to different communities surviving/thriving.

The paramount goal is to foster critical thinking and problem-solving through the development of a winning strategy (SLO #1). Students strategize by selecting the organisms and setting for their reef (ecology, SLOs #6-9), but the possible mutations and disasters encountered are random (evolution and extinction, SLOs #2-5, & SLOs #10-12). Strategy development is facilitated with an onboarding assignment and short introductory video, and the follow-up activity reinforces concepts, systems, and processes covered by the game. Ultimately, a learner engaged with these activities will likely have a more concrete understanding of how mutation, migration, and natural selection processes interact with environmental factors (e.g., bathymetry, climate change, and natural disasters) to shape a marine community and its evolution through time. The game guides the player through these concepts and highlights how their interactions result in long-term ecological and evolutionary changes as well as how short-term perturbations may have longer-term ramifications.

- Working in groups
- Quantitative assessments of communities/assemblages
- Discussion or Write up (depending on the chosen synthesis activity)

This activity is described in our article: Martindale et al., 2023, "Reef Survivor": A new board game designed to teach college and university undergraduate students about reef ecology, evolution, and extinction. (open access)

All game materials and teaching materials can be downloaded from doi: https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/S3KWT7

Teaching notes can be found in the game materials and explained in more detail in Martindale et al., 2023 (open access)

A pre-game and follow-up student worksheet and discussion questions can be found with the game materials and are described in Martindale et al., 2023. (open access).

This activity is described in Martindale et al., 2024, "Reef Survivor": A new board game designed to teach college and university undergraduate students about reef ecology, evolution, and extinction. Journal of Geoscience Education. 72:1,37-56, https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2023.2221818 (open access)

All game materials can be downloaded from doi: https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/S3KWT7.