Question

8. You are studying an annual wildflower population. Flower color is either red or yellow and is controlled by a single locus with 2 alleles: R and y. Red is dominant to yellow, and both homozygous RR individuals and heterozygous individuals have red flowers, while yy individuals have yellow flowers. You have been studying this population for a long time and have seen fairly consistent allele frequencies for these two colors, with R=0.65 and y=0.35. Two years ago, a new insecticide was used along the road that runs past your study population. For some reason, the bee species that used to pollinate most of the yellow flowers was heavily hit by the insecticide and has disappeared. As a result, reproductive success of the yellow flowers has fallen and only 1% of the yellow flowers now survive and reproduce, relative to 100% for the red flowers. What do you expect the new frequency of the y allele to be in the population following this selection event? In question #8, 9. What is the average excess of fitness for the R allele? 10.What is the average excess of fitness for the y allele?

Answer 1

Y=o.34% , R=100%

R is dominant and strong with pollination and predator free.

Y is recessive and weak with the predator average allele frequency will b less than R.