Question

In an initial simulation, a small population of six snails (out of 85) founded a new population. Suppose 50 snails from the original site. (rather than six). Assuming these 50 snails survived and reproduced on the new island, what effect would the larger sample size have on the result? Could you predict any shifts in the gene pool due to random genetic drift?

Now consider the two populations of snails living on a single island. Is it at all plausible that these populations might become reproductively isolated? If reproductive isolation does occur, describe some long-range consequences that you might expect to observe in snail populations. If speciation were to occur on a single island, what types of adaptations might you expect to evolve in the WTSP predator population?

Answer 1

Possibility of occurrence of larger and more varied gene pool with genetic drift. It would also create greater diversity among the different genotypes as size of population and different genotypes are directly proportional to each other. Genetic drift is the change of frequency of an allele or existing gene variant in a population due to random sampling. No it is not plausible that both populations will become reproductively isolated. If at all it occurs it may lead to accumulation of genetic differences in population. And with time they give rise to new species. Allopatric separation of the founder and parent population raises the probability of attachment of different alleles with different gene loci over time may occur so that the two populations will no longer reproduce with one another.