Discussion on Inbreeding

1. Summarize the Saccheri abstract (bold print at beginning of article).




2. Explain why decreased heterozygosity may be damaging to the fitness
of an individual, and to a population.



3. Inbreeding does not directly cause a population to evolve -- it is an indirect
evolutionary force.  Give an example of a direct evolutionary force that works
in tandem with inbreeding to cause evolution.  Explain how this would work in
the Melitaea cinxia population described in the Saccheri paper.




4.  Why is the Glanville fritillary metapopulation an ideal natural system to
investigate inbreeding?



5. Summarize the life history of the Glanville fritillary, including its habitat.



6. What is a sib-group of larvae?



7. Describe the genetic material that was used to determine heterozygosity.



8. Summarize how heterozygosity varied among populations.



9. Saccheri et al. suggest that inbreeding is highly variable in their system.  Why
is this so?



10.  It should be possible to reach meaningful conclusions on inbreeding in the
Glanville fritillary metapopulation system with just serveral loci.  Why is this
so?



11.  What is the overall approach used by Saccheri et al. that was used to understand
the relationship between extinction and inbreeding?



12.  What is genetic load?  What is a deleterious recessive?




13.  Explain how random genetic drift might influence selection against deleterious alleles
in the Glanville fritillary metapopulation system.