Conservation Biology- Part 2

Heterozygous offspring have a higher survival and fitness compared to either homozygous parent

Relative reproductive output of an individual in a population compared to everyone else

Very little genetic diversity

Mating with relatives

Loss in vigor and fitness due to an increase in homozygosity

1.) natural selection may produce populations with different genetic/phenotypes being favored

2.) neutral evolutionary mechanisms (e.g. genetic drift, founders effect, and bottlenecks)

random loss/fixation of alleles in a population

• The establishment of a new population by a few original founders which carry only a small fraction of the total genetic variation of the population.
• The result is that a given allele, gene, or chromosomes, or part of a chromosome found in a member of the popultation can be traced back to one ancestral individual.