Module 6

 Inbreeding

    

    Inbreeding is a bit of a tough subject that is often common in nature, but not in humans. It has both pros and cons that will be discussed in this blog post, as well as my thoughts on it. One of the pros of inbreeding is that it can concentrate genes of a superior organism in a population, and overall increase the population's fitness. If one organism has traits that increase its fitness by a large amount, it makes sense that the entire population would want these traits as well. Inbreeding can help fix these desired types much quicker than it would be done if reproduction was random. As we talked about in our last R exercise, fixing is when a set of alleles in a population either becomes entirely recessive or entirely dominant. On the flip side of this, inbreeding can also concentrate and pass on any of the undesirable traits that an organism might have had along with the desirable traits. In humans, inbreeding is a social no-no nowadays, but long ago it used to be fairly common to maintain pure bloodlines. Inbreeding depression is a side effect of inbreeding where the offspring have a higher chance of being homozygous, which can increase the chance of them being affected by deleterious traits. The decreased fitness of the population is a side effect of inbreeding depression, although it is usually only temporary. If an organism has the alleles for a favorable trait but is heterozygous for a trait that is deleterious if it is homozygous recessive, inbreeding increases the chance of its offspring being homozygous recessive and spreading it through the population.

    In regards to the second part of the blog prompt, I would interpret the phenotype distributions as what you would normally expect on Kelleys Island, Bass complex islands, and Middle and Pelee Islands. There is some variation within the population that is probably due to migration from other islands. Ontario makes sense for it to be fixed at type D, since it is so far away from the other islands. Penisular mainland is interesting, as there is little variation from type D, but it is enough to show some migration that may be the cause. Migration is good for populations, as it introduces new genes into the population that may be good and help improve the fitness of the population, with little risk. If the gene being introduced is deleterious, it will fade out over time. If it gives a fitness advantage, it may get introduced and take over in the new population.

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