Genetic diversity and gene pools
Why is genetic diversity important? How do important factors in evolution (genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, natural selection) impact genetic diversity?
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session you should be able to:
- Explain how allele frequencies relate to genetic diversity of a population
- Predict the direction of change to the level of genetic diversity in a population due to mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift (bottle neck and founder effect)
Introductory activity
Match the definition to the evolution word (Poll everywhere competition)
Reveal answers
Gene Pool:
- “the complete set of alleles present in a population”
Allele Frequency
- Incidence or proportion of genes which have a particular allele within a population
Genetic Diversity
- Amount of variation within a gene pool
- How many different alleles?
- What frequency do the alleles occur?