BIS 2B Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: White Feathers, Allele Frequency, Kin Selection

• School: UC-Davis
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BIS 2B
• Professor: Mark Schwartz; Sharon Strauss

Document Summary

: benefit to self > cost to self. Theme of today"s lecture: if natural selection acts on random mutations that occur at low frequencies, Yet paleontologists, evolutionary biologists and ecologists tell us that evolution . Researcher glued feathers onto the head of zebra finches- will females hang out with males that had different colored heathers or no feathers at all on their head? (gaudiness with no fitness effects). Females spent a huge fraction of time around males with silly white feathers glued to their head, less with males that had no feather, and even less with silly red/green feathers. If this were an actual mutation, evolution could act very quickly. Density (frequency) changes in allele frequencies driven by differential mortality set against a backdrop of non-selective mortality. Also called hard selection - typically a slow process (but think of rapid climate change )