Genetic diversity loss
4 important questions on Genetic diversity loss
What are the main causes for genetic diversity loss?
- Small population size
- Reduction in population connectivity (habitat loss and fragmentation)
What are the negative effects of loss of genetic diversity?
- Population viability through
- Fixation of deleterious alleles
- Genetic drift
- Loss of adaptive genetic variation
- Evolutionary potential to adapt to changing environments
- Individual fitness (and possible animal welfare)
- Disease resistance
On what 2 levels can genetic diversity be measured? What measures are used for each level?
- Genetic diversity among populations. Measured by the FST. High FST may indicate reduced genetic connectivity between populations.
- Genetic diversity within populations. Measured using heterozygosity (H), Hobs or Hexp. Low genetic diversity > low chance of sampling 2 different alleles > low H.
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How do you prevent/counteract genetic diversity loss?
- Increase size of individual populations
- Exchange of genetic material between populations via migrants --> gene flow.
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