Question

Explain whether inbreeding causes evolution and/or changes genotype frequencies. How does inbreeding affect an individual’s fitness?

Answer 1

Inbreeding is the process of mating of organisms or individually that are genetically related.

Inbreeding affects the rate of evolutionary change and indirectly lead to evolutionary change. Inbreeding in itself does not cause any evolution as the allele frequencies do not change in the population as a whole. It increases the frequency of natural selection.

Usually inbreeding affects the fitness of the offspring as there is a chance of recessive traits. There is increased chance of increase in genetic disorders and decrease of immune response. There is a high chance of homozygosity increasing in each generation of inbreeding thus leading to decreased fitness in the population