Genetics
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@The roles of genetic drift, founder effect, and natural selection on the allele frequencies of the new colonies inhabited by Drosophila melanogaster: based on size and distance of the new populations
Jana Greeno
April 28, 2002
Abstract
Population genetics is used frequently throughout science to study the dynamics of the gene pool of a population. In this experiment, the Drosophila melanogaster fly was looked at to predict differences in allele frequencies from a parent colony to several new colonies throughout several generations. Three hundred flies (100 wild/wild, 100 wild/white, 100 wild/ mutant) were released to colonize at islands of different sizes and distances. Several hypothesis were formed based on eye color (wild verses white), wing structure (wild verses vestigial), the distances and sizes of the islands, and the effects of founder effect, natural, selection, and genetic drift on the islands. Chi square values were used to show if the data was supportive of the hypotheses. It was found that that greatest amount of genetic drift was on the large far island unlike the expected small far island. Like expected, the closer and larger islands accumulated more colonizers. The ratio of vestigial winged flies did not increase on the mainland The greatest chi square value was for the large close island when comparing it to the mainland population showing the greatest founder effect. To improve the data results there should have been more generations and locations for colonization used in this experiment.
Introduction
Population genetics is a study that relies heavily on mathematical modeling to make quantitative predictions about the behavior of genes in a population...