Lecture 7 study guide

Question 1

Genetic drift

Answer 1

random fluctuations in allele frequencies

Question 2

heterozygosity

Answer 2

the frequency of heterozygotes in a population, defined by the formula H=2p(1-p), p is the frequency of one of two alleles

Question 3

census size

Answer 3

when estimating population size, this is the number of individuals that you count, regardless of whether they’re reproducing or not

Question 4

effective population size (Ne)

Answer 4

the number of individuals in an ideal population where all individuals reproduce in which the rate of genetic drift would be the same as in the actual population

Question 5

bottleneck

Answer 5

a sever, temporary reduction in population size

Question 6

founder effect

Answer 6

genetic drift in a small colonizing population

Question 7

inbreeding depression

Answer 7

the resulting decline in fitness and fecundity that occurs when closely related individuals reproduce, increases homozygosity in individuals that are more likely to share the same recessive deleterious alleles

Question 8

inbreeding depression

Answer 8

the resulting decline in fitness and fecundity that occurs when closely related individuals reproduce, increases homozygosity in individuals that are more likely to share the same recessive deleterious alleles

Question 9

NEUTRAL THEORY OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

Answer 9

the great majority of mutations that are fixed are effectively neutral with respect to fitness and are fixed by genetic drift

Question 10

molecular clock

Answer 10

evolutionary substitutions at the molecular level proceed at a constant rate, so the degree of sequence difference between species can serve as a way to estimate relative divergence times, can be calibrated to estimate actual times using data from the fossil record