Population Genetics and Hardy-Weinberg Populations Lab General ...

Question 5
Is your final population in equilibrium? (be sure to have the work in your notebook)
The Effect of Mutation
Now we will go back to primitive prehistoric Dotty lore, where there were only three colors of Dotties in
existence, red, yellow and orange. The Dotties had legends of weird “colored” Dotties appearing in their
myths but there has never been conclusive proof of this in prehistoric Dotty populations. Let us see
what would have happened in the population as these unusual alleles appeared.
Methodology
1. Start with an initial population of sixty Dotties, 19 each for Yellow, Orange and Red and then one
each of the Green and Purple (yes, I know it is 59, go with it).
2. Have one individual be the predator for your population and remove themselves from the bench
while the remaining students place the Dotties onto the environment.
3. When all Dotties are place the “Predator” must, as quickly as possible, remove twenty (20)
Dotties with the provided tweezers.
4. Recover the remaining thirty-nine Dotties and categorize them by phenotype.
5. Using the provided Spreadsheet, calculate and record the allele frequencies for each allele and
the predicted population distribution for the next generation.
6. Using the population calculated in Step 5, repeat Steps 2-5 with the new population (same
predator) for three successive generations.
7. Record the results of the final population and determine if the final population is in equilibrium.
8. Repeat the procedure with a second, different environment.
Lab Write-Up
1. The lab write-up should contain the following.
2. The lab handout with answered questions
3. Your lab notebook sheets with all data and calculations
4. Formal Lab Report Containing
a. Introduction
b. Procedure write-up (paragraph form) for the final Effect of Mutations
c. Analysis write-up (tables) of the two successive environments
d. Graphs of the Allele Frequency vs. Generation for each environment
e. Discussion of whether the populations are in equilibrium and what factors play into
them either being or not being in equilibrium. Compare this to how a species might
develop in a real environment.