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Author Topic:   Which animals would populate the earth if the ark was real?
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1052 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 36 of 991 (576199)
08-23-2010 7:42 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by jar
08-21-2010 10:34 AM


Re: Viability of small populations
The mouflon population of the Kerguelen islands in the Indian Ocean are all descended from a single pair imported in 1958. By the 1980s, they numbered in the hundreds, and still do today.

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 Message 14 by jar, posted 08-21-2010 10:34 AM jar has not replied

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 Message 37 by Percy, posted 08-23-2010 8:34 AM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1052 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 38 of 991 (576430)
08-24-2010 5:07 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by Percy
08-23-2010 8:34 AM


Re: Viability of small populations
Genetic diversity cannot decline when you start from a single pair. With sexual species, a single pair is as low in diversity as you can get without going extinct.
I don't see why diversity couldn't decline. A population of two could have up to four alleles for any given gene, so if any of these were lost the population would have less diversity. This wouldn't drive them extinct. It might leave them less able to cope with environmental change, but you could wind up with a population that's totally homozygous for one gene or other that's still producing viable indivduals.
And, if I understood the article correctly, this happened less than expected by theoretical modelling in this population. In such a tiny population all it would take is for a couple of homozygous individuals to be very successful and one allele would become by far the dominant one in the population. Instead, they found the population had maintained many of the different alleles, and they were present in a variety of combinations.
What this means for Noah's ark is that single pairs could give rise to viable populations (the individuals should probably be as distantly related as possible), but genetic measures of diversity would still reveal that there were only 4 alleles max per gene. This is not what we see today.
Four alleles plus any additions through mutation in the last few thousand years. This isn't meant to be supporting evidence for the idea of the Ark, though. Jar had just asked for examples of pregnant individuals giving rise to viable populations. This was the closest I know of.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Percy, posted 08-23-2010 8:34 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
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