Question

CONSERVATION APPLICATION Consider the following hypothetical scenario, and answer the questions below. Scientists recently published a paper about an endangered population of Scarlet Bass (spe- cies A) in Lake Eric. The authors also published its entire mitochondrial DNA sequence on Genbank, an online system where scientists submit genomic data. Another group of scientists later published an article using molecular data to estimate gene flow among populations of the very abundant Grey Bass species (species B) in Lake Erie, and published mitochondrial data on Genbank as well. After you read the papers you realize that the ranges for species A and a few isolated populations of species B overlap: you look at the sequence data published online from both studies, and you realize they are very similar and differ only by a few wucleotide differences. 8. Do you think these are closely related species, or variants of the same species? Why? (0.5 pu) 9. How might you test your answer to the last question? (1 pt) 10. How might your results from #9 affect the conservation status of each species or variant? (1 pt)

Answer 1

Question

8. I think that species A and species B are variants of the same species. This is because they are very similar in their nucleotide sequence and ranges of both the species overlap in fewer region.

9. To test, that both belong to same species , they should be able to reproduce and produce fertile offsprings.

10. The result that both are same variant of same species , conservation strategy would be same for both the species.

11. Yes, morphological data can be rejected in lieu of presence of molecular data because molecular data show how two species are closely or differently related by the molecular data like nucleotide or protein sequence data.