Test Bl20K

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

EXAMINATION OF DECEMBER 2007
Code and Name of Course: BL20K EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY Paper: THEORY

Date and Time:Duration: 2 Hours

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES: This paper has THREE pages with twenty questions.

This examinationcontains THREE SECTIONS. Candidates MUST
answer ONE from SECTION A. ALL questions in SECTIONS B and C are COMPULSORY.

SECTION A

1. Listed below are five (5) animal species. In terms of evolutionarybiology, describe the major conclusions from at least one scientific study that involved each species.
a) Greater prairie (10 marks)
b) Flour beetle (10 marks)
c) Zonosematavittigera (10 marks)
d) Medium ground finch (10 marks)
e) Drosophila subobscura (10 marks)

2. Discuss altruism within the animal kingdom, with special emphasis on thesimilarities and differences between altruism in vertebrates and invertebrates.
(50 marks)

SECTION B

3. Draw a hypothetical phylogenetic tree that shows one polyphyletic group and oneparaphyletic group (indicated by circling the group). (6 marks)

4. Imagine a population allele frequencies of 0.43 for A1 and 0.57 for A2.

a) Using the fitness values below, calculate theallele frequencies after one generation of
selection: A1A1: 100% survival
A1A2: 42% survival
A2A2: 53% survival

(3marks)

b) Nowimagine a fictional population of 1000 individuals with the allele frequencies calculated in “A”. Calculate the allele frequencies of this population after it is joined by 178 homozygous A1A1 migrants.(3 marks)

c) Finally, imagine a mutation that converts copies of A1 to A2 at a rate of 0.001 per generation. Calculate the allele frequencies of the population from “B” following...