Question

Consider a species of sparrow that originally lived only in Alaska but recently expanded its range through North America, then Central America, and finally South America. How would you expect heterozygosity for most loci to differ among populations in North America, Central America, and South America? Why? Which of those three regions would you expect to have the most genetically similar populations, and which the most different?

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

At the point when biological species moves from its local area to an all the more remotely found area or an area of various condition, it experiences mutational changes with course of adjustment to the new condition. This causes age of single nucleotide polymorphisms in the different loci of these species.

According to the information, the species of sparrow was native to Alaska but first moved to North America and then to South America through Central America. Since all these three geographical locations have very stringently different environmental conditions, the species of sparrow must have underwent acclimatization followed by adaptive changes leading to permanent alterations in its genome.

Hence, it is very likely that the native species from Alaska will have a very different phenotype as compared to that of the species now residing at all three places.

Conversely, since the environmental conditions of central and north America are somewhat comparable in nature, the species of sparrows in these areas will have least number of differences with respect to their genetic loci.