Question

Populations evolve for many reasons. Suppose there is a population of plants that have either purple flowers or white flowers, and the allele for purple flowers is dominant. This means that plants with two purple alleles have purple flowers. Plants with one purple allele and one white allele also have purple flowers. Only plants with two white alleles have white flowers.

For each event or condition described below, answer the following questions.

• Which mechanism of evolution is at work?
• How does this event affect the population's gene pool? Do the frequencies of the two alleles change, and if so, how?

Answer 1

1. During an extreme heatwave, plants with white flowers survive better

a. Natural Selection

b. White allele increases

2. A person uproots the five closest plants, which all happen to have white flowers

c. genetic drift

d. frequency of purple allele increases

3. a storm kills many plants

e. genetic drift

f. allele frequencies change but not predictably

4.plants with purple flowers attract more insects, which pollinate the plants

g. Natural selection

h. frequency of purple allele increases

5.workers in a greenhouse...

i. gene flow

j. frequency of white allele increases