week 5
sample question 1
Imagine that you’re an insect biologist and want to study wing coloration in
the scarlet tiger moth (Panaxia dominula). Previous research has shown that
coloration in this species behaves as a single-locus, two-allele system with
incomplete dominance. You decide to go to the field and collect specimens to
study whether little spotting is an advantageous trait. You collect 1612
individuals. Their data are below:
White-spotted (AA) =1469
Intermediate (Aa) = 138
Little spotting (aa) = 5
Calculate the following frequencies:
A=
a=
AA =
Aa =
aa =
sample question 1
Imagine that you’re an insect biologist and want to study wing coloration in the scarlet
tiger moth (Panaxia dominula). Previous research has shown that coloration in this
species behaves as a single-locus, two-allele system with incomplete dominance. You
decide to go to the field and collect specimens to study whether little spotting is an
advantageous trait. You collect 1612 individuals. Their data are below:
White-spotted (AA) =1469
Intermediate (Aa) = 138
Little spotting (aa) = 5
Calculate the following frequencies:
A = 1469*2 + 138 = 3076 / (1612*2) = 0.95
a = 5*2 + 138 = 148 / 3224 = 0.05
AA = 0.95^2*1612 = 1454.83
Aa = 2*0.95*0.05*1612 = 153.14
aa = 0.05^2*1612 = 4.03
sample question 1
Now assume that you went back and re-sampled the
population five generations later to check for the possibility of
rapid evolution. You found the following data:
AA = 1402
Aa = 200
Aa = 10
Is this population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium at the
p=0.05 confidence level? What about at the p=0.01 confidence
level?
sample question 1
Now assume that you went back and re-sampled the population five
generations later to check for the possibility of rapid evolution. You found the
following data:
AA = 1402
Aa = 200
Aa = 10
Is this population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium at the p=0.05 confidence
level? What about at the p=0.01 confidence level?
(1402-1454.83)^2/1454.83 + (200-153.14)^2/153.14 + (10-4.03)^2/4.03 = 1.92
+ 14.34 + 8.84 = 25.1
25.1 > 3.8: significant at p=0.05
sample question 2
You have sampled a group of individuals from Conakry to test for
potential resistance to malaria from sickle-cell anemia. Unfortunately,
you lost most of your data in an unexpected storm and all that you have
left is the percentage of the homozygous recessive genotype (aa), which
is 36%. Using that information, calculate the following:
f(aa) =
f(a) =
f(A) =
f(AA) =
f(Aa) =
What percentage of the population in Conakry has potential resistance
to malaria?
sample question 2
You have sampled a group of individuals from Conakry to test for
potential resistance to malaria from sickle-cell anemia. Unfortunately,
you lost most of your data in an unexpected storm and all that you have
left is the percentage of the homozygous recessive genotype (aa), which
is 36%. Using that information, calculate the following:
f(aa) = .36
f(a) = sqrt(0.36) = .6
f(A) = 1 – 0.6 = 0.4
f(AA) = 0.4*0.4 = 0.16
f(Aa) = 2*0.4*0.6 = 0.48
What percentage of the population in Conakry has potential resistance
to malaria?
36% severe homozygous (fatal), 48% heterozygous (resistant), 16%
homozygous (susceptible)
species concepts
• which was used to differentiate extinct spp before
the 80s?
• why use phylogenetic if criteria are more strict
under biological?
• is there a possible hybrid approach that allows for
strict criteria, but can also deal with having more
than just if offspring can reproduce?
• does it matter which one subscribes to? are there
greater scientific and political consequences of
one over the other?
ring species
how do ring species come about?
human impacts
• How might climate change impact species? Will they
be able to adapt to new conditions? Or will species go
extinct?
• Does wild vs captivity equate to geographic isolation?
Is it possible then, that in the long term captive
breeding might not necessarily conserve or save an
existing species but contribute towards mechanisms
that would create new species?
• To what extent has the introduction of new species in
an environment by humans led to the elimination of
species?
• What happens to an ecosystem when the tertiary
consumer population is endangered by human
development?
early evolution
• What’s a protist? how are they an artificial
assemblage?
• How did life evolve absent of ozone?
• If evolution is about increasing fitness, why
doesn't bacteria evolve in into a more complex
or advanced organism?
assorted questions
• What’s the calvin cycle and what part does it
play in carbon fixation?
• Is an intertidal community a biome?
• How can we reconstruct what the common
ancestor of a given group of organisms was?
• What is a paleospecies?