Week 3 Flashcards
What is evolution?
Change in heritable traits of biological organisms over generations
What is genetic drift?
Random fluctuations in allele frequencies occur as a
result of ‘sampling error’ between generations in finite populations
What can be impacted by genetic drift?
All loci/alleles subject to genetic drift - but all are not necessarily subject to selection (at any given time/place)
What is the outcome of genetic drift?
Can lead to replacement of old alleles by new alleles (and sometimes the trait they confer) - non-adaptive evolution
What is genetic drift in the potential outcomes of evolution?
Genetic drift = null hypothesis for evolutionary change
What can be an alternative cause of genetic drift?
Sampling error alone can cause frequency of alleles to go up or down
How can you work out the random variance in allele frequency between one generation and the next?
V = p (1-p) / 2N
V = variance
p = allele frequency
2N = 2 x number of individuals (number of gene copies in a population)
What has the greatest impact on variance?
Higher variance in smaller populations (mathematical property!)
What does genetic drift have the most impact on?
Genetic drift is most important in small populations
Why does genetic drift impact smaller populations?
They have a greater variance every generation for allele frequency meaning it is more likely that by random chance two allele A1 are in the embryo compared to A1A2 or A2A2. Larger populations have greater security from this as more individuals can heterzygous or more likely to meet homozygous of the other varient
What does genetic drift mean for heterozygosity?
As allele frequency drifts towards fixation or loss, the frequency of heterozygotes decreases
What does Hardy-weinberg principle state?
Hardy-Weinberg theory states: p2+ 2pq + q2 = 1 …
Where p = freq of allele A1 q = freq of allele A2
Where is herterozygous at its biggest?
Frequency of H is highest when p = 0.5 ( 2 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.50)
As freq of A1 moves towards 0 or 1 the freq of H falls ( e.g. 2 x 0.9 x 0.1 = 0.18 )
How can you predict the frequency of heterozygosity in fututre generations?
Hg1 = Hg [1- 1/(2N)]
Averaged across populations, the frequency of heterozygotes (H) obeys the relationship
Where Hg+1 is heterozygosity in the next generation
N = number of individuals in the population (2N = number of gene copies)
Hg is heterozygosity in the present generation
What is the value of [1 - 1/2N]?
The value of [1 - 1/2N] is always between 0.5 (when N = 1) and 1 (when N = infinite)
What does the [1 - 1/2N] number mean for heterozygosity?
So expected H in the next generation is always less than in current generation
If N is large the decrease in H is small - if N is small the decrease in H is large
What does bottlenecks mean with drift and variation?
Big decrease in population size – a specific case of drift.
Usually results in loss of genetic variation
What is the founder effect?
If a new population is formed by a small number of colonists, the genetic drift ensues
What is the consequence of the founder effect?
A colony formed by a small number of founders will suffer loss of genetic variation – rare alleles are likely to be lost
What happens to heterozygosity if a colony is founded by 2 people?
A colony founded by just a pair, N = 2 then H1 = H [1-1/4] = H1 (0.75)
Heterozygosity, on average, reduced by 25% per generation
How impactful is genetic drift?
Genetic drift is the predominant force at the genetic and phenotypic level
What is the difference between genetic drift and natural selection?
Genetic drift, unlike natural selection, acts on genetic variation in a predictable manner, in relation to past and present population size
What is important in using genetic drift of non selected genes?
So if we can measure variation at genes not under natural selection, we can compare patterns of DNA variation from current populations to reconstruct their population history
What is an experiment where they demonstrated genetic drift on real life population?
107 experimental populations of D. melanogaster heterozygous for eye colour (A1 A2). In all populations the starting frequency of Allele A2 was 0.5
Selected 8 males and 8 females randomly from each population in each generation to start the next generation of that population
What was the outcome of the experiment on genetic drift on Drosophula melanogaster?
By generation 19:
30 populations lost allele A2
29 had fixed allele A2
What is an example of wildlife being impacted by genetic drift?
Berthelot’s pipit, Anthus berthelotii, colonisation of the macaronesian islands
What was the outcome of Anthus berthelotii colonisation of macaronesia islands?
Founder (bottleneck) effects explain 60% variation at neutral
genes
Bottlenecks- better predictor of morphological variation than
the environment
What did Anthus bethelotti colonisation show about the strength of genetic drift?
Drift can (often!) be stronger than selection
How can genetic drift be applied to evolutionairy history?
Genetic drift enables us to reconstruct population history
What is an example of genetic drift being used to show population history?
Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis)
How was the Seychelles warbler population history traced by genetic drift?
Endangered when discovered
Compared DNA between 26 museum and contemporary specimens
Used simulations to model genetic drift over time and reconstruct population history
Seychelles warblers existed in 10,000’s across the region a few hundred years ago
What is census size?
Number of individuals in a population
Why is genetic drift and loss of heterozygosity will be greater than expected?
Genetic drift and loss of heterozygosity will be greater than expected because not all individuals contribute genetically to the next generation
The population is effectively smaller than it really is
What is Ne?
Ne = effective population size
What is effective population size?
The size of an ideal theoretical population that would lose
heterozygosity at the same rate as the actual population
What can impact effective population size?
Variation in the number of progeny
Overlapping generations
Unequal numbers of males and females
Fluctuations in population size
What can impact effective population size?
Variation in the number of progeny
Overlapping generations
Unequal numbers of males and females
Fluctuations in population size
How does variation in the number of progeny impact effective population size?
If some individuals have more offspring than
others, Ne will be reduced
How does overlapping generations impact effective population size?
Individuals mate over multiple generations
Offspring may mate with parents
They carry identical copies of the same genes, so the effective number of genes in the population is reduced
How does unequal numbers of males and females impact effective population size?
You can use forumla: Ne = 4(Nm x Nf) / (Nm + Nf)
What is the effective population of 100 individuals with 50:50 ratio?
4(50 x 50) = 10,000 50 + 50 = 100
10,000 / 100 = 100
What is the effective population of 100 individuals with 20 males : 80 females ratio?
2(20 x 80) = 6400 20 + 80 = 100
6400 / 100 = 64
How can flucutating population size impact effective population?
All populations fluctuate in size – the rate of genetic drift is higher in small populations, so Ne is more strongly affected when population is small
Calculate using harmonic mean
What is the forumula of effective population size?
nh = k / ((1/n1) + (1/n2) …… (1/nk))
k = number of generations
1/nx = the number of breeding adults at a generation