Question

A population of western skinks, a type of lizard, lives in a grassland habitat along the base of a mountain range. The construction of a multi-lane highway will divide the habitat into two separate regions. How will the construction of the highway most likely affect the western skink population? A. The western skink population size would decrease by half, reducing the probability that the population will evolve and speciate. B. Western skinks would become better able to find unrelated mates, decreasing the population's susceptibility to diseases. C. Western skinks would become an invasive species in one of the two regions, so the total population size would increase. D. The western skink population would be separated into two groups, and genetic diversity would decline in each group.

Answer 1

The answer is; D

Due to the road cutting across the ecosystem, the western skinks would be unable to move freely across their original ecosystem, hence mating would be non-random.  Mating would only be random on either side of the road hence dividing the original population into two subpopulations.This would reduce diversity in either of the population and would make it hard for them to acclimatize to changes in the environment (since natural selection acts of genetic diversity), Over time, the to population, if they do not go extinct will diverge into different species.