Question

Question: In a real rabbit habitat, new animals often come into the habitat (immigrate), and others leave the area (emigrate). What is this mechanism of evolution called? How might you simulate this effect if you were to repeat this activity?

Activity: You will examine natural selection in a small population of wild rabbits. Evolution, on a genetic level, is a change in the frequency of alleles in a population over a period of time. Breeders of rabbits have long been familiar with a variety of genetic traits that affect the survivability of rabbits in the wild, as well as in breeding populations. One such trait is the trait for furless rabbits (naked bunnies). This trait was first discovered in England by W.E. Castle in 1933. The furless rabbit is rarely found in the wild, because the cold English winters are a definite selective force against it. In this lab, the dominant allele for normal fur is represented by F and the recessive allele for no fur is represented by f. Bunnies that inherit two F alleles (homozygous dominant) or one F and one f allele (heterozygous) have fur, while bunnies that inherit two f alleles (homozygous recessive) have no fur. The frequency of F and f allele starting with 0.5 and 0.5.

Result: The frequency of f allele decreasing, but never meet 0.00 / The frequency of F allele increasing by the generation.

Answer 1

emigration is the phenomenon of leaving one's habitat and immigration is the entry of new habitat in the population. this mechanism of evolution involves gene flow.

entering or leaving the habitat or population leads to change in the gene pool. there is an alteration in the allele frequency when the individual entering or leaving the population reproduces with the new gene pool. they introduce new and different genes in the population through evolution.

gene flow can be stimulated in the given case of normal fur and furless rabbits by allowing the mating of rabbits with normal fur (FF genotype) and Ff genotype rabbits. then eliminating the furless rabbits from the population and allowing the remaining rabbits with normal fur that are homozygous for F allele are those which are heterozygous till few generations. hence, the frequency of both alleles can be maintained. in this way, the number of heterozygous individuals can be increased and f allele can be preserved by the phenomenon of gene flow.