Question

On a remote pacific island, exists a species of rabbits can which have very short ears. during a storm, a crate containing live long-eared rabbits of the same species is washed over the side of a ship and eventually washes onto the shore of the island. this event causes the rabbit population of island to be immediately be changed from all short-eared rabbits to one in which 80% of them have short ears and 20% have long ears. this would be an example of microevolution through ______.

Answer 1

This is an example of microevolution through gene migration. This is a term that describes the transfer of genes from one population to another. The population of rabbits living on the remote island had the allele for very short ears. The population of rabbits in the ship had the allele for long ears. The two populations came in contact on the island and the allele of the ship-living population was transferred to the population of the island, explaining the change in the allele frequencies.