Microevolution Research Paper

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Recommended: Describe the interplay between the gene flow, genetic drift and selection

Microevolution and Macroevolution Microevolution is the change in allele frequencies that occur over time. This changes the genetic makeup of a population from generation to generation. Also microevolution is based on a single species, and it also why it’s called small scaled evolution. Mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection are all processes that can directly affect gene frequencies in a population. But to understand microevolution, one must first know what an allele is. Alleles are one of two or more genes that may occur alternatively at a given site (locus) on a chromosome. Occurring in pairs, alleles express trait or a phenotype. If the paired alleles are the same, the organism is said to be homozygous for that trait. …show more content…

The basics of alleles are they way traits are spread in mutation. Imagine a mothers eyes are brown (BB) and the fathers are blue (bb). What what are the chances their children will have blue eyes like their father? Using a basic Punnett squares created by Gregor Mendel, one can find this out. Because the mother brown eye (BB) is dominant alleles, there is a 100% chance the child will have brown eyes (Bb). In another case, let’s say both parents have brown, but they are (Bb).After setting up a Punnett square, there's a chance their to have a child with blue eyes is 25%. Due to having the dominant alleles (B) in both parent and the recessive allele, you can see there's still a 75% chance their child will have brown eye. Also known as gene flow, another kind of microevolution is migration. It is movement of genes from one population to another. This is based on different event, such as location change. During the process, genes are carried to a population where those genes previously did not exist. Gene flow can be a very important source of genetic variation. For example brown beetle migrations into a group of green beetle, creating a group of …show more content…

The term was first introduced by Charles Darwin in the 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Selection is process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. Like in Darwin book, Galapagos finches all have different types of beaks. During drought, the finches with the larger beaks survived better than those with smaller beaks. During rainy times, more small seeds were produced and the finches with smaller beaks fared better. Final is genetic drift, random changes in the gene frequencies of a population from generation to generation. Resulting from sampling error, some genotypes reproduce more than other genotypes. This is my chance, not because some genotypes are “better” than other. Similar to natural selection, genetic drift affect the makeup of the population. But this processed is only by chance, not survival of the fittest. For example, a group of green and brown beetles living together, then one day half of the green beetles are eaten by a group of

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