1 Screaming Pandas are a highly endangered if annoying creat

1. Screaming Pandas are a highly endangered if annoying creature that you want to conserve for future generations. If there are only 25 surviving pandas in your care:

   a) How much heterozygosity will be lost in the next generation? (Hint: use the formula given in lecture).

   b) What might the long-term consequences be of this loss of genetic diversity, and why?

   c) What if anything can you do to prevent this decrease in heterozygosity?

formula given: Hg+1 = Hg (1 - (1/2N)) where N = population size

2. You are a zookeeper (no, I checked; you are). One day, you discover that a baby endangered black rhino born in your zoo carries a new mutant allele that gives it 20% higher fitness than normal (wild-type) rhinos. Since these animals are highly endangered in the wild, you consider releasing this lucky mutant into a natural population in Africa, hopefully to increase the average fitness of the surviving rhinos there. Would it make more sense to release this mutant, and the new allele it carries, into a population of 20 rhinos, or a population of 1,000 rhinos – in which population would the mutant allele likely do the most good? Explain your reasoning.

3. Islands often show extremely modified organisms, compared to their mainland counterparts -- examples include miniature hippos and rhinos, or gigantic birds, lizards and tortoises. (A) Give two reasons islands are likely to be strongly affected by genetic drift, and why this might lead to extreme modifications. (B) Explain why natural selection might change the organisms on an island from the ancestral mainland forms.

[note: this question is basically asking you to think critically about the differences between selection and drift, and to recognize the ways each can affect a population that colonizes a new environment like an empty island.]

Solution

a) Calculation of Heterozygosity lost in the next generation need heterozygosity or allele freq in parent generation.

b). Loss of genetic diversity would lead to inbreeding depression and may lead to extinctions under any selection pressure.

c).Random mating between the individuals can be done to prevent the decrease in heterozygosity.