In: Biology
Create the genetic basis of a dog (e.g. a locus with two or more alleles) for the phenotypic characteristic of the ear size
Then create a brief scenario of how the evolutionary
forces Genetic Drift, Gene Flow/Migration,Natural Selection)
might change the allele frequency and phenotype in the
population
For example the trait is tentacle length in octopi and
TT octopi have long tentacles, tt octopi have short tentacles and
Tt octopi have intermediate tentacles. In the habitat in
which these octopi are found the ones with the longest tentacles on
average get the most food. You would continue to describe how
the allele frequency and thus the average tentacle length would
change.
The length of dog legs are controlled by a single gene locus.
There are two alleles, which goven the length, dominant allele L
which makes the dog taller and recessive allele l which makes them
shorter. The alleles also exhibit codominance such that a dog with
both L and l alleles will have front legs shorter than the back
legs.
Dogs interbreed randomly in a population and as a result the gene
pool is constantly shuffled and mixed. The dogs are under constant
natural selection by their prey the rabbits. The rabbits run faster
and to catch them dogs must also run faster. The dogs with longer
legs can run faster and thus can outcompete the other dogs.
Eventually the population will be dominated by the dogs with longer
tails. The dogs with tall and short legs are also at advantage of
not being able to run as fast as tall ones. however they do run
faster than the shorter ones thus have higher genotype than the
shorter ones.
The dogs were once seen as menace in society and government decided
to kill them. The teams were sent to kill dogs, who would ley trap
nd kill the dogs. The dogs fell to trap irrespective of their leg
length and thus were randomly eliminated. This is a genetic
drift.
Some dogs migrated to other localities in search of food and mate.
The longer legged dogs made it to diverse areas and thus changed
the genotypic frequency of the population. The increased inbreeding
between long and short legged dogs due to migration and selection
led to increase in frequency of codominant dogs.
Thus the cycle of gene frequency continued in a population.