Stabilizing selection __________.

It seems logical that natural selection would work toward genetic uniformity; the genotypes that are most fit produce the most offspring, increasing the frequency of adaptive alleles and eliminating less adaptive alleles. Yet there remains a great deal of genetic variation within populations. Describe factors that contribute to this variation.

Botanists are looking for the wild ancestors of potatoes, corn, and wheat. Why is this search important?

SCIENTIFIC THINKING In Module 31.1, several lines of investigation are used to investigate the time and location of the domestication of important crops. Which line of evidence do you consider the most reliable? Why?

The human genome consists of approximately 3 billion base pairs. If humans typically differ from one another by about 3 million base pairs, what is the nucleotide variability of Homo sapiens?

Which of the following mechanisms can form entirely new alleles?

Sexual recombination includes the shuffling of chromosomes in __________ and fertilization.

Which type of mutation plays the most important role in increasing the number of genes in the gene pool?

Which of the following would seem to be an example of neutral variation?