Question

Based on your observations, what is the result of drastic declines in population size (bottlenecks) on genetic diversity in a population?

Did the population undergo microevolution? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Genetic diversity of a population is the sum total of different types of genes found in the entire population. When a population size is drastically reduced, then many of the genes are lost, and the overall genetic diversity of the population is decreased.

When the genetic diversity decreases, then there are lesser variations available for natural selection to act upon. Thus, the reduced population or bottleneck, allows all the available genes to grow. This changes the frequency of genes or alleles in the reduced population when compared with allele frequencies with the original large population (that existed before the bottleneck event) .

This means that microevolution is taking place, which can be defined as the change in allelic frequency in a small population.