Lecture 5 Flashcards
What happened between the 1920s and the 1950s?
- the creation of the mathematical evolutionary theory for population genetic change
- initiated by Fisher, Haldane, and Wright
- provided the foundations for Neo Darwinism and the New Synthesis
- showed that continuous variation and Darwinian natural selection are entirely consistent with Mendel’s Laws
- demonstrated the evolutionary significance of genetic variation
state the 5 forces that influence patterns of genetic diversity and evolution and what effect they tend to have
- mutation - increases diversity
- recombination - increases diversity
- genetic drift - decreases diversity
- natural selection - increases/decreases diversity
- migration - increases diversity
how does mutation influence patterns of genetic diversity?
- increases genetic variation in populations
- caused by errors during replication
how does recombination influence patterns of genetic diversity?
- increases genetic variation in populations
- creates new combinations of alleles and mutations
how does genetic drift influence patterns of genetic diversity?
defined as the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) due to random chance
- acts to decrease genetic variation in populations
- random sampling affects every generation
- more important for populations that are smaller
three types of natural selection
- negative (purifying) selection
- positive (directional) selection
- selection favouring diversity
negative (purifying) selection
- decreases genetic variation in populations
- mutations that reduce fitness are removed by natural selection
positive (directional) selection
- decreases genetic variation in populations
- mutations that increase fitness will eventually become fixed in a population
selection favouring diversity
- increases or retains genetic variation in populations
- natural selection can act to maintain diversity over the long term (eg heterozygote advantage)
how does migration (gene flow) influence patterns of genetic diversity?
- increases genetic diversity in populations
- migration influences the structuring of diversity over a large spatial scale
describe the two metrics of genetic variation
Heterozygosity (H)
- fraction of individuals that are heterozygous, averaged across gene loci
Polymorphism (P)
- proportion of gene loci that have 2 or more alleles in the population
- a locus can be polymorphic without being heterozygous
define fixation
occurs when a polymorphic locus becomes monomorphic due to the loss of all but one allele (can occur due to natural selection or genetic drift)
decreases differences between populations.
what maintains genetic variation?
- mutation-selection balance
- selection maintaining variation
mutation-selection balance
- less fit types reintroduced by mutation
- followed by selection acting to remove them
selection maintaining variation
- the maintenance of genetic variants at intermediate frequencies over long periods of time