Question

Alarm calls are common in ground squirrels of several species. When a squirrel squeals the equivalent of "heads up", all the squirrels are supposed to scurry into their burrows and hide. If they do, they avoid getting eaten by predators. In a really silly population of 100 squirrels, only 36 respond to the "heads up" squeal by scurrying into a hole and hiding, while the remaining 64 respond by "sticking their heads out the hole" as if to see what's going on, and thus suffer a mortality (death) rate of 60% before reaching reproductive age.

Assume that squirrels who stick their heads out of a hole (instead of hiding) are homozygous for a recessive allele. Assume that our population initially was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Use H and h for your alleles.

What are the allele frequencies?

Answer 1