Question

Consider a population of 5000 garter snakes. Two hundred of those snakes split off from the population to a new habitat. When the original population dropped from 5000 to 4800, the allele frequencies of various genes changed. The evolutionary process that caused the change in allele frequencies in the original population is:______

a. migration
b. genetic drift
c. mutation
d. stabilizing selection

Answer 1

A. Migration

Step-by-step explanation:

Migration is one of the evolutionary forces that change the allele frequencies of the population. Migration refers to the movement of individuals from one population to another. As the individuals move out of a population, transfer of alleles also takes place. When the immigrated individuals interbreed in a new population, they add new alleles to the gene pool of that population.

In the given example, 200 garter snakes moved out of the population resulting in changed allele frequency of the original population. Since the changed allele frequency was due to the movement of snakes, it represents migration.