BIOL313ps1_16 - Biology 313 Ecology Evolutionary Biology...

Biology 313, Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Problem Set 1, Due Sept. 28
1. Which of the evolutionary mechanisms is adaptive?
2. What did Darwin mean by the term “fitness”? What does relative fitness have to do with
the future gene pool?
3. What is the main ecological unit that can evolve?
4. If a population of Larkspur has 4 white flowers in a population of 112 individuals, and
white is homozygous recessive, how many individuals in a population that has 672 would
be heterozygous? What is the frequency of the dominant allele?
5. A population consists of 100 individuals of the following genotypes:
AA Aa aa
15 50 35
a) What is the frequency of the alleles?
b) Is this population in HW equilibrium, or is it evolving? Explain.
6. At the individual level why is energy efficiency important in natural selection?
7. Why would the genetic composition of a single species located in two separate locations
be different? Give five reasons.
8. An ecologist surveys two populations of kangaroo rat, Diplodomys ordi . Each population
is separated by the Saskatchewan River into two subpopulations.