Title: The Bottleneck Effect on a Population of Northern Elephant Seals (Mirounga angustirostris) in Relation to the Hardy-Weinberg Principle
Submitted: February 13, 2014
For course: BLG 144
I understand that it is a violation of the Academic Code of Conduct to copy answers or text from another student, either verbatim or in substance (i.e. to use another students answers but rephrase in my own words). I also understand that it is a violation of the Academic Code of Conduct to share my answers or text with another student in a way that facilitates copying of my answers. Such violations could result in a charge of Academic Misconduct. In submitting this assignment for a grade, I am declaring that the work presented is my own original work, other than the data in Table 1 that was provided by my instructor.
Introduction: The objective of this experiment is to see whether or not the population of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) being studied is evolving or not. At the beginning of the study, the population contained 783 individuals, but due to a toxic algal bloom, the population was reduced to 35 individuals. Over the span of 18 years, the population slowly recovered to 420 individuals. This population consistently returns to the same breeding ground every year and has done so for the past 20 years that I have been studying them. The sudden drop in population size is due to the bottleneck effect. The bottleneck effect is a sudden reduction in population size due to environmental change or human actions (Brookfield, 2001). This evolutionary process may affect allelic frequencies negatively or positively, depending on what alleles are lost and what alleles remain in the gene pool. The population of seals being studied was found to have a mutant allele which results in an improperly folded protein and non-functional potassium channel that can cause kidney failure. This mutant allele is a dominant allele. The possible outcomes of this bottleneck are that the mutant allele would be lost forever, the mutant allele would remain within the population and increase in frequency, or the allelic frequencies would remain the same. If the mutant allele were to be lost, then the seals would be safe from genetic kidney failure, but if the allele remained within the population, over time it could spread throughout many individuals and harm the population. Male seals compete with each other through a combination of threats, fighting, and chasing, and then quickly establish a social hierarchy in which the most dominant males are at the top (Gogan, 1977). The ability of a male seal to be selected by a female seal or seals depends on his status within the social hierarchy (Gogan, 1977). Female seals tend to stay together in tight groups (Gogan, 1977). This is an example of non-random mating because female seals select male seals that have a higher status within the social hierarchy. The Hardy-Weinberg principle tells us what the expected genotypic frequencies are supposed to be in a population, given the following assumptions: that mating is random, all genotypes have equal fitness, there is no immigration or emigration, there are no mutations, generations do not overlap, the population is very large, and genders are evenly distributed among the three genotypes (McMurran, 2010). The genotypic frequencies in a population can be found using the Hardy-Weinberg equation: p 2 +2pq+q 2 =1, where p 2 is homozygous for the dominant allele, 2pq is heterozygous, and q 2 is homozygous for the recessive allele. The sum of the frequencies of the alleles of a given gene in a population always equals 1 (Mertens, 1992). If the frequency of a gene in a population were to meet Hardy-Weinberg expectations, it would mean that the population is not evolving, since the only way to meet those expectations is to satisfy all those assumptions as stated above. A population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium will have the same genotypic frequencies generation after generation. When a population deviates from expected genotypic frequencies, that population must be evolving since allelic frequencies are changing.
Results:
Table 1: Allele frequencies and predicted genotypic frequencies for northern elephant seals over duration of the study Frequency of wild-type gene (YEAR 1) = 0.9839 Frequency of mutant gene (YEAR 1) = 0.0161
Frequency of wild-type gene (YEAR 20) = 0.9880 Frequency of mutant gene (YEAR 20) = 0.0120
Expected Genotypic Frequencies SS Ss ss YEAR 1 0.0003 0.0317 0.9681 YEAR 20 0.0001 0.0237 0.9762
The results show that after the bottleneck, the frequency of the wild-type gene increased and the frequency of the mutant gene decreased. The expected genotypic frequencies reflect this as well, because the frequency of the homozygous recessive gene increased, while the frequencies of the homozygous dominant and heterozygous genes both decreased. Although the expected genotypic frequencies are now different than from 20 years ago, none of the differences exceed more than 0.01. The frequency of the wild-type gene increased by 0.0041, while the frequency of the mutant gene decreased by the same amount. For expected genotypic frequencies, the homozygous recessive gene increased by 0.0081, the homozygous dominant gene decreased by 0.0002, and the heterozygous gene decreased by 0.0080. The sum of these frequencies is 0.0001 off from 1.000 due to rounding errors.
Discussion: The results obtained from this experiment are important because they will determine whether or not the population of northern elephant seals is evolving or not. If they are evolving, it will determine whether or not they are evolving towards a population which will have high mortality rates due to kidney failure, or a population in which a gene that codes for an improperly folded protein and non-functional potassium channel becomes even rarer or ceases to exist. Since the genotypic frequencies now deviated from the genotypic frequencies 20 years ago, the population is not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. This would suggest the population is evolving. Even though the change in genotypic frequency is significantly small, it has only been 20 years since the beginning of the study, which is considered to be a very short time for a population to evolve. It is also most likely that the population is not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium because random mating is not occurring. Adult males compete with each other through threats and fights, and form a social hierarchy, and the degree to which a male is able to be selected as a mate by a female is dependent on his status within the social hierarchy (Gogan, 1977). As can be seen in Table 1, the frequency of the wild-type gene increased and the mutant gene decreased proportionally. This might be explained by mate preference. If a male were to exhibit signs of kidney failure, he would probably not be able to compete with other males in obtaining a high status in the social hierarchy, and therefore would less likely be selected as a mate by a female. In short, males with the mutant allele would be less preferred and the chances of them producing offspring would be really low, and in many cases they would probably die from kidney failure before they reached an age of sexual maturity. This might explain why the frequency of the mutant gene decreased since 20 years ago. If the population were to continue evolving in this way, then eventually the mutant gene will be much reduced in frequency or even lost. Since the trait for a functional potassium channel varies in a heritable manner, the wild-type gene will be naturally selected because it will most likely result in a seal with higher fitness than a seal with the mutant gene, and the trait for a functional potassium channel will be passed on to the next generation as an evolutionary response (Grant and Grant, 1995). The genotypic frequencies in the seal population today may have increased as a result of the bottleneck. If the bottleneck had not killed some of the seals with the mutant allele, then the frequency of the mutant alleles would have increased and then may have spread by chance throughout the tiny population, therefore harming the entire population (Brookfield, 2001). But due to the bottleneck, some of the seals with the mutant allele were killed, reducing the frequency of the mutant allele within the population. The results suggest that the evolutionary process of bottlenecking played a significant role in shaping the seal population and the prevalence of kidney disease in the population. Although natural selection favored the wild-type gene and eventually will have decreased the frequency of the mutant gene by itself after many generations, the bottleneck event sped up the process significantly. If there were to be another bottleneck, it may not kill any seals with the mutant allele and as a result it will increase in frequency within the population. It all depends on who survives.
References:
Brookfield, John F.Y. (2001) Population Bottlenecks. Current Biology, Vol. 11, No. 24, pp. R1000
Gogan, Peter J.P. (1977) A Review of the Population Ecology of the Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris). U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center. 6 pp.
Grant, Peter R., and Grant, B. Rosemary (1995) Predicting Microevolutionary Responses to Directional Selection on Heritable Variation. Evolution, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 241-251
McMurran, Shawnee L. (2010) The Hardy-Weinberg Principle. Primus: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Vol. 20, No. 6, pp. 529-549
Mertens, Thomas R. (1992) Introducing Students to Population Genetics & the Hardy-Weinberg Principle. The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 103-107