Question

A population of splendid fungus beetles lives in my backyard. A gene determines how many spots they have on their hindwings. Those with the dominate phenotype (BB and Bb) have 3 large spots, and those with the recessive phenotype (bb) have 7 small spots. The population isn't very big - only 50 beetles. I counted them and notice that 18 have three large spots and 32 have seven small spots. If there is no natural selection, mutation or gene flow from another population (and mating is random), how much could the allele frequencies change in one generation just by chance?

Answer 1

Genetic variation is usually expressed as a relative frequency, which means a proportion of the total population under study.

It may evolve by :

Relative phenotype frequency is the number of individuals in a population which have a specific trait or phenotype. To compare different phenotype frequencies, the relative phenotype frequency for each phenotype can be calculated by counting the number of times a particular phenotype appears in a population and dividing it by the total number of individuals in the population.

Relative genotype frequency and relative allele frequency are the most important measures of genetic variation. Relative genotype frequency is the percentage of individuals in a population that have a specific genotype. The relative genotype frequencies show the distribution of genetic variation in a population. Relative allele frequency is the percentage of all copies of a certain gene in a population that carry a specific allele. This is an accurate measurement of the amount of genetic variation in a population.allele frequencies may change from one generation to the next. Allele and genotype frequencies within a single generation may also fail to satisfy the Hardy-Weinberg equation.