Blanding's Turtle Populations

When a species gives rise to a new species the small group breaks away and becomes geographically/reproductively isolated from its ancestral group. As long as it remains small and detached, the founder group can experience fairly rapid genetic changes.

From the data we can conclude that different traits or parameters can effect a population in many different ways. It can decrease or increase a population depending on the trait. After a hurricane hits Lake Malawi the cichlid fish male population must adapt to the new factors that have been put upon them. Mutation within the population supports the fact that it can cause dominant and recessive allele frequency to decrease. Migration causes the allele frequency to lower as well due to movement of the population after the hurricane. The cichlid male fish with a higher fitness are more suitable for their environment, but when their fitness is lowered, their allele frequency decreases. This

Loss of genetic diversity in natural populations has often been attributed to a severe reduction in population size. Testing of nine loci in three heavily fished areas concluded that all loci that were strongly polymorphic in the 1982 study showed a reduction in heterozygosity with the exception of one

Speciation is when a population cannot exchange genes with another population. This occurs because of geographic, behavioral, and temporal isolation. The rodents in the St. Kitts island is a small species that has been threatened by development. The populace is extremely minuscule and the rodents are struggling in finding a mate. During my study, I noticed the Nevis rodent population were very healthy and could be used as potential mates for the rodents in the island of St. Kitts. Unfortunately, after 240 attempts to mate the populations no reproductive event was successful. The St. Kitts rodents and the Nevis rodents cannot exchange genes

The group discovered is more closely related to anteaters than to the other sloths (Document B). Though all of the groups (populations A-D and the anteaters), trace back to one common point, the newly discovered population of sloths is closer to anteaters than it is to the other three populations of sloths. This difference even is evident on the genetic level. The team geologist recorded that the new population shares “little to no common genes with other populations” of sloths in the region (Document E). Therefore, the new group is not closely related to the preexisting

The threatened bog turtle is a very small turtle, averaging 3.1 to 4.5 inches in length (USFWS 2015z) and it is characterized by a light brown to ebony shell and bright yellow, orange, or red blotches on each side of the head (USFWS 2001). The FWS proposed a final rule in 1997 to list the northern population of the bog turtle as threatened and southern population as threatened due to similarity of appearance, under provisions of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (62 FR 59605 59623, November 4, 1997). Regionally the northern population of the bog turtle is known to occur in localized distributions from western Massachusetts and Connecticut southward to Maryland, and the southern population is known to occur from Virginia southward to Georgia (USFWS 2001). In New York it is known to occur in 15 counties in the southeastern region of the state or along the south coast of Lake Ontario (USFWS

The Graptemys caglei, also known as the Cagle’s Map Turtle, is an endangered turtle species found in San Antonio, Texas and along the Guadalupe River. It identifies easily by the pattern on its shell which resembles an aerial view topography, as well as its spiked shell edges, which are not as sharp as other map turtles of the same genus. Although the Cagle’s Map Turtle has natural predators pose a threat to the individual turtles’ lives, the predators are not a greater threat than habitat disturbances created by humans. Unfortunately, this species suffered a significant drop in population since the mid-1970 through changes in its habitat disallow support of a larger population of the turtles(van Dijk, P. P., 2011).

A. Rus hoelze et al, studied the impact of intense hunting of Northern Elephant Seals in the late 19th century, whose genetic variation reduced due to this bottleneck. This reduced their population size to just about 20. They found that although it has since rebounded to over 30K now but compared to their southern counterparts i.e., Southern Elephant Seals they have much less genetic variation. The Southern Elephant Seals didn’t went through this bottleneck event. It is clear that the genes of Northern Elephant Seals still carrying the marks of this bottleneck.

The Blanding turtle are freshwater medium sized turtle usually found in The Great Lakes Regions in USA and in Canada. They are from the omnivorous species and usually eat crayfish, small animals, and plants. Their life histories traits occurs between April and November, as May and April tend to be more for mating and Early June for nesting. Less than half of these females will actually go on to reproducing. Many of these turtles can actually live up to sixty to a hundred years in age. Though these turtles spend a majority of time in the aquatics they also come on to the mainland. This is were the problem starts to occur and this is why the Blanding sea turtles are currently threatened and may soon be extinct. It is because of us humans that these species are currently facing habitat loss, have threatened nesting areas, and are unable to get from nesting areas to the lakes because of manmade roads. Why should we as humans care so much if these Blanding’s turtles go extinct? These turtles play an important

Variation in allele frequency through time will be the net result of colonizing and extinction processes in the population. In other words, while species abundance in the population may remain stable over time, genetic diversity may vary (Figure 1). For instance, we would expect populations at earlier stages of establishment to exhibit greater genetic turnover rate compared to populations that are well established (Figure 1). For the black-legged tick in southern Quebec, all populations regardless of establishment stage will likely be experiencing regular influxes of new genetic material from the introduction of new individuals. However, the relative amount of novel genetic material relative to that already present locally will differ depending on the establishment stage (Figure 1). For populations still undergoing recolonization-extinction cycles, the relative amounts of novel genetic material will likely be much greater compared to local genetic material due to high local mortality rates (Figure 1). In this case, we would expect to observe great amounts of genetic turnover over time, assuming that introduced individuals originated from multiple random source populations. Conversely, populations that are well established with a self-sustaining pool of local individuals would likely have enough local genetic material to mask the signal of any introduced material (Figure 1). Therefore,

These results indicated a noteworthy change in the size of particular colored chip populations. Our group’s initial prediction was that the blue color chip would have the highest number of individuals left in the 6th generation. The black chip population had the highest number of organisms that survived and were able to reproduce for the last generation. Color chip populations such as yellow, pink, green, blue, and white were extinct by the 5th generation. The colors did not change to monomorphic instead yellow, orange, purple, brown, red, and black last until the end of the

In order for natural selection to take effect with coat coloration of rock pocket mice that live on New Mexico’s Valley of Fire’s lava flows, conditions were met that are necessary and sufficient for evolutionary change. These conditions relate with variation. With variation, the coats of the mice must be heritable, and have a distinctive mortality (Study Week 4). The variation occurs here with the two different colours of fur; dark and light. These colours came from slightly different genes over time that controls their pigment. This mutation has heritability because the dark mice coat has enough of an advantage for staying alive that their offspring had more offspring and so on; eventually leading to natural selection weeding out the mice

Through the reduced numbers of genes passed down to devil, gene flow within Tasmanian devil populations are decreasing. This study suggests that DFTD is the major cause for the loss of genetic diversity within Tasmanian Devils.

Additionally, I. longirostris was genetically different among and across rivers. This first insights about the population genetic structure of I. longirostris is crucial for monitoring the genetic diversity, management and conservation of its populations and complementing the genetic studies in Prochilodontidae.

This experiment fit well the theory of evolution. Overall, evolutionary rates ranged from 4.8 on the largest island to 144.2 on the smallest island. This data point proved that the evolution of mammals on islands is over 30 times greater compare to mainland. Their second result, smaller mammals gravitated to change to a lesser breadth than large mammals, concluded the amount of change does not depend on the area of an island. In their third result, they concluded that the island area have no effect on the direction of size change in island mammals. The number of species, and the number of competitors and predators, the available resource, and the environment are all factors related to island