hunting reduces the population size of the northern elephant seal to as few as 20 individuals at the end of the 19th century. their population has since rebounded to over 30,000, but they have much less genetic variation than a population of the southern elephant seals that was not so intensely hunted. how is the lack of genetic variation related to the hunting episodes of the 1800's?

Question

Biology

Tori Gregory

20 November, 23:49

hunting reduces the population size of the northern elephant seal to as few as 20 individuals at the end of the 19th century. their population has since rebounded to over 30,000, but they have much less genetic variation than a population of the southern elephant seals that was not so intensely hunted. how is the lack of genetic variation related to the hunting episodes of the 1800's?

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Answers (2)

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Cindy Gilmore · Answer 1

Basically what happened was the population went through a population bottleneck in the 1800s which then resulted in the only way for future offspring was a lot of positive assortative mating which results in fewer genetic variation (similar to the founder effect for the second part)

Gunner · Answer 2

The answer is A). Genetic drift occurred: the few individuals left behind were the seals that passed on that specific gene pool.