Question

4. In the past century, sea otters in the California coast have been hunted to almost extinction. Nowadays, few populations remain. As a biologist, your job is propose a plan to help maintain healthy populations of otters. The initial step, however, is to identify any signs of inbreeding (i.e., non-random mating) in the existing two populations, so you can better manage them. Here is what you know about a particular locus (A) that you are using in your genotyping studies: - Santa Cruz population: 54 otters Genotypes: 26 otters (AA); 7 otters (Aa); 21 otters (aa) - Monterey population: 174 otters Genotypes: 50 otters (AA); 79 otters (Aa); 45 otters (aa) Are these populations inbreeding? How can you tell? What can be the potential evolutionary mechanisms acting in these populations, and why? What would you proposed to better manage these otter populations?

Answer 1

• Yes ,the population is inbreeding because the ration of aa is more.
• This happens due to the Genetic Drift Concept.
• Genetic Drift is a process wherein allele frequencies within a population change by chance alone as a result of sampling error from generation to generation.
• It is a random process.
• Large changes in population can occur over a short period of time.
• One way to manage the Otter population is by inter-mating or cross breeding.
• This allows to protect the otter species.