Question

3. (22 points) Researchers sampled mitochondrial DNA from populations of two species of insect herbivores throughout their range, which includes the North American mainland and the peninsula of Baja California, a map of the sampled populations is shown in Figure 2. They calculated haplotype diversity and counted number of haplotypes for each species (Table 3), performed an AMOVA (Table 4), and determined pairwise Fst values between populations, illustrated by the matrices in Tables 5 and 6. Based on these data, describe and contrast aspects of the population genetics of these two species. Be sure to address the following questions in your response: What do the data in Table 3 show? What patterns are apparent from the data in Tables 4, 5, and 6? What processes could give rise to the patterns of genetic structure and variation observed? One of the species depends on a host that is locally abundant, and thus it has a short dispersal distance. The other species depends on hosts that are more scattered and less predictable. Based on these data, can you tell which species has each set of traits? Be sure to refer to specific aspects of the data in formulating your response.

Answer 1

Answer :)

Table 3 includes a number of haplotypes in populations of species A and B in which species A has higher haplotype diversity that may due to higher pairwise differences and nucleotide diversity. Due to this, species A has more polymorphic sites than species B in comparing an almost equal number of base pairs.

Table 4 is showing molecular variance in both species. Species B has a negative AMOVA value while species A has a higher positive value if variations observe among groups. However, within groups and populations, species B is higher variations.

Table 5 and 6 contains a value of FST and Nm in which FST values moving towards 1 show higher genetic variance. For example, GUY to RCR comparison gives 0.48 FST value. Therefore, these two populations are genetically varied. The Nm values give the number of migrants in the population. Higher the number will show higher migrants.

From figure 2, the main cause of genetic variation is the environmental effect because speciation is not observed in higher numbers. There are two species only. Therefore, such genetic variations in different geological areas are considered due to the environmental effect.

Form table 4, 5, and 6, we get those genetic variations are increased within the same geographical area. For example, populations 10 to 17 are in the same geographical area and have a large number of variations. This is due to genetic polymorphism.

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