Question

1. A new island forms off the coast of Florida after an earthquake. Four squirrels get washed out to the island and survive.
   1. How will the genetic diversity of the new island population compare to that of the mainland population?

2. A land bridge forms between the mainland and the new island allowing squirrels to migrate to the island. If continual, large migration of raccoons to the island happens over several generations, how will the allele frequencies of the island population change?

3. If there was no formation of the land bridge, what mechanism(s) of evolution are likely to have the greatest effect on the new island population of squirrels?

Answer 1

Question

a. The genetic diversity of the  the new island population will be less as compared to the mainland population. This is because new island population consist of only few individual that have less genetic variation.

b. If the land bridge forms between the mainland and new island, the allele frequency will change due to migration of the raccoons and lead to increase in genetic diversity.

c. If there was no formation of the land bridge, bottleneck effect and founder effect of  mechanism(s) of evolution are likely to have the greatest effect .