Question

It is speculated that H. floresiensis and H. sapiens may have lived on Flores concurrently. Suppose researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA samples from the H. floresiensis remains, amplified a 1000-base-pair sequence via PCR, and compared it to that of several currently living H. sapiens native to Indonesia, North Africa, and North America. Also suppose H. floresiensis were found to differ from the average Indonesian H. sapiens in 28 base pairs, from the average North African H. sapiens in 51 base pairs, and from the average North American H. sapiens in 53 base pairs, while two randomly selected H. sapiens differed from each other in an average of 21 base pairs. What conclusions would you draw from these data?

Answer 1

Answer:

Based on this data, The H.sapiens most likely to have lived at Flores would be  an ancestor of Indonesian H.sapiens

Explanation:

• If H.florensiensis and H.sapiens lived together one would expect some sort of interbreeding between the two. This would make them share more genetic information.
• The DNA would differ in a few base pairs- enough for them to be different species but small enough to indicate interbreeding.
• This is the case with the Indonesian H.sapiens, the DNA sequence differs by 28 base pairs.
• The average North African and North American H.sapiens differs by 51 and 53 base pairs respectively - this is too much of a difference to indicate interbreeding
• The average H.sapiens differs from the other by 21 base pairs - this was a control to show that interbreeding populations will share a large proportion of DNA sequence similarity