Genetic Drift Flashcards
What is genetic drift/random sampling?
changes in relative allele frequencies due to random events (ex. disasters like hurricanes)
Is genetic drift more influential to variation in small or large populations? why?
small - there’s a higher chance of losing alleles (genetic diversity) if there’s fewer individuals
T or F: genetic drift is an important driver of evolution
true
T or F: direction of genetic drift is unpredictable
true
Why is the direction of genetic drift unpredictable?
genetic drift is a result of RANDOM events, so whether or not, and which alleles will be lost or retained and in what frequencies is totally random
How does genetic drift effect variation within a population (increase, decrease, maintain)?
it reduces variation within a population because alleles can be lost
how does genetic drift reduce variation within a population?
results in loss of alleles –> increases homozygosity
What phenotypes did the 2018 (first) study by Donihue and Losos look at?
they measured toe pad size against body size of lizards before and after (surviving) a major hurricane (genetic drift event) to determine whether natural selection is acting on, and selecting for, larger toe pad size
Why would increased toe pad size and shortened femurs in the island lizards result in increased fitness?
larger toe pads and shorter femurs compared to body size results in a better ability to grip onto branches during a hurricane = increased survival
What did the 2018 (first) study Donihue and Losos find?
their figure showed a clear difference between the average toe pad size (compared to body size) of lizards before and after the two hurricanes. they found that afterwards, the lizards had larger average toe pads
How does the 2018 (first) Donihue and Losos study provide evidence for natural selection?
their study shows a fitness difference between phenotypes (larger vs smaller toe pad size) by finding the average toe pad size after a hurricane event was larger than before the event (those with larger had higher fitness)
Why does the 2018 (first) Donihue and Losos study not provide evidence for evolution?
even though there’s a phenotypic difference, there’s no evidence that the larger toe pad size is genetic/heritable and for evolution to occur, the phenotype with increase fitness must be heritable
What could Donihue and Losos do to determine the heritability of the toe pad phenotype?
- study the same experiment in the next generation for those traits
- analyze information on the genetic basis of toe pad size
What did Donihue and Losos do in their follow-up study to gain more evidence for evolution of toe pad size?
they looked at the next generation in the same lizard population and found the same results: after the hurricane in 2019, the toe pad sizes were larger
this provides evidence that there’s a connection between survival and the next generation (heritability)
What was the overall major finding of the work by Donihue and Losos?
they provided strong evidence supporting that hurricanes are causing the evolution of toe pad sizes in these island lizards
= on islands where hurricanes were more frequent, the lizards had larger toe pads (across different species and in different locations)
How does genetic drift affect the relative frequencies of genotypes?
it increases homozygosity and decreases heterozygosity because it causes the loss of alleles
What is the expected result in terms of genetic drift from a pop G simulation if the population size is large (10,000 individuals), both alleles are at 0.5 frequency, over 100 generations and no mutations, migrations, or natural selection?
the allele frequencies exist about the same over time and hover around the zero genetic drift line, P(A) = 0.5
How can we use pop G to simulate the effects of genetic drift?
by lowering the population size, keeping allele frequency at 50%, no introduced mutations, migrations, and no natural selection (relative fitness = 1 for all) to compare to the zero genetic drift line
What happens in pop G when the population size is decreased?
the frequency of A and a fluctuate more and more as the population size decreases = more genetic drift occurring
some of the populations even become fixed for A or a (ie., one of the alleles is lost) = reduction in variation
T or F: the reduction in variation (fluctuation of A and a frequency) in small populations is due to fitness differences between the alleles
false = when genetic drift is a strong influence (when pops are small), the loss of alleles or change in allele frequency is due to chance
What is the evolutionary result of genetic drift (ie., across multiple populations)?
divergent evolution of populations (populations of the same species that have different allele frequencies)
What is a relevant example of genetic drift in humans?
microcephalin - this was not due to fitness differences (no natural selection), just random chance
Explain how bowling can be a metaphor for genetic drift
the width of the bowling lane can be considered the population size = the narrower the lane, the easier it is for the ball to drop into the gutter = an allele to be lost
the proximity to the edge of the lane can be considered the allele frequency = the closer the ball is to the gutter, the more likely it is to go into the gutter = the lower the frequency of an allele, the more likely it is to be lost
What is a genetic bottleneck?
a reduction in population size to a small size
T or F: genetic bottleneck events in a population increase the effects of genetic drift and founder effects
true
what are founder effects?
when genetic variation is dependent on the allele frequencies present in surviving individuals after an event which reduced population size (ie., genetic bottlenecks)
What can cause genetic bottlenecks?
population crashes due to sampling events such as environmental disasters
colonizing a new population from a small number of founder individuals
How long can genetic drift/founder effects continue influencing variation in a population?
a long time, regardless of population growth rate
Explain how elephant seals are a good example of a genetic bottleneck and resulting, persistent genetic drift/founder effects
Dramatic crash in population size caused by over-hunting, down to ~40 individuals in 1850
since, the population has been allowed to rebound back up to ~100,000 but the genetic variation present in that population today is all based on what alleles were present in the 40 survivors in 1850
= genetic drift and founder effects still persist hundreds of years later and regardless of rebounded pop size
Why might we want to quantify the effects of random sampling/genetic drift?
in order to predict how population sizes can affect the frequency of A and a alleles
How can we quantify the effects of random sampling/genetic drift?
Use Hardy Weinberg set up to determine what allele and genotype frequencies look like in a large population prior to a sampling event
then use the binomial distribution-based Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift to compare the probability of the genotype frequencies after a sampling event
What are the steps of quantifying the effects of random sampling?
- large population size with 2 alleles (A, a) with equal frequency (p = q = 0.5) and genotype frequencies = 1/4 AA, 1/2 Aa, 1/4 aa (HWE: p2, 2pq, q2)
- random sampling event occurs causing a population crash and only a very small number of individuals survive, ex. n = 4. What is the probability that just by chance, all 4 have the AA genotype?
- based on binomial distribution, if AA has a 1/4 frequency in the original population size and there’s 4 individuals in the population –> (1/4)^4 = 1/256 chance that the 4 surviving individuals are all AA
Explain the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift and binomial distribution
Binomial distribution assumes that each individual in the experiment has an equally likely chance of being selected = this is why the Wright-Fisher model uses this probability distribution method because individuals in a population have an equally likely chance of surviving a random sampling event
Wright-Fisher model can be used to predict the probability (frequency) of the different genotypes with the number of individuals in the population and their allele frequencies
What was the classic genetic drift experiment that was basically a real life pop G simulation?
Peter Buri assessed the effects of genetic drift in 1956 - he looked at the frequency of alleles (started at 50/50) in 107 small populations (subject to genetic drift; n = 16, including both males and females) of Drosophila flies over 19 generations
What did Peter Buri find from his Drosophila experiment?
even just from the initial population to the first generation, there was already spread of allele frequencies
after just 5 generations, some populations started to show a huge decrease and near losses of alleles
After 19 generations, he found that 30 populations became fixed for one allele and 30 became fixed for the other
How did Peter Buri’s experiment compare to the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift?
Buri’s results showed that over a shorter period of time, more populations lost one of the two alleles and there are fewer populations retaining both A and a (on a graph, larger bars on the ends - like the gutters)
whereas,
the WF model shows more populations retaining both A and a alleles (slower loss of variation)
lower peaks on the ends (gutters) = over 19 generations, there were less populations fixed for one allele and more populations with both
Why are Peter Buri’s results different from the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift? Given that they both use n = 16 and initial frequency of alleles = 0.5
the WF model is THEORETICAL which means it doesn’t account for the actual number of reproductively active individuals in a population and assumes all 16 individuals are contributing to reproduction
In real life, just because there’s 16 individuals, it doesn’t mean all 16 are reproducing and if there’s less reproducing individuals, the population size is EVEN SMALLER so we would see an even greater genetic drift effect (faster loss of alleles)
How could the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift be adjusted to more accurately match the results observed by Peter Buri?
if the population size was decreased to less than 16, it might resemble Buri’s results more due to the effective population size (number of individuals contributing to reproduction) usually being smaller than the actual population size in real life populations
What is the effective population size?
Ne
the amount of individuals within a population contributing to reproduction - not every individual within a population is contributing to reproduction
it is the size corresponding to genetic drift (not the actual population size)
Will Ne be smaller or larger than N?
smaller
How does the effective population size effect genetic variation within a population?
the Ne will always be smaller than the population size, sometimes it can be much smaller
genetic drift has a stronger effect on smaller populations, and since the effective population size is the true representation of the population size, if that value is small, alleles will be lost at a faster rate = genetic variation will be reduced
How can bottleneck/random sampling events affect the effective population size?
after a population crash/in a small population, the ratio of male to female individuals and the proportion of individuals capable of reproducing is RANDOM and likely not equal
ex. a population may now only consist of males in which case there’s no possibility of reproduction
ex. there may be no or very few reproductively mature individuals = alleles not present in the reproducing individuals will be lost
Explain how elephant seals are a good example of effective population size effecting genetic variation
after their numbers were dramatically reduced to ~40, there was asymmetry in the number of males present and the number of males able to contribute to reproduction
only the reproducing males would have been able to pass on their genes, and alleles in non-reproducing males would have been lost
so the founder effects are even stronger in this population = the current ~100,000 individuals have alleles based on probably even less than 40 individuals
results in very low genetic variation
What is another example of effective population size contributing to genetic variation?
In bee colonies, only the Queen bee (a single female) contributes to reproduction = very small effective population size compared to actual population size
What is the effective population size in humans? how does it compare to the actual population size?
Ne = 10,400 (estimated)
N = ~8 billion (estimated)
Effective population size is difficult to measure, so how do we do it?
we estimate it using the Wright-Fisher model