Lecture 9/10: Genetic Diversity cont. and Con bio and stewardship

creation is…

nature

What do Christians believe God is?

the creator and sustainer of our world

what responsibility does God give humans?

the stewardship and privilege of managing his creation

what did God do?

redeemed creation from evil

what value does creation have?

God said his creation is good. When we conserve creation, we should avoid crisis-oriented and vacation-oriented protection, and instead protect creation because it has value regardless of its use

Devil’s hole pupfish

- critically endangered species found only in devil’s hole, a low oxygen concentration habitat

- year-round reproduction with low egg survivorship and short lifespan (10-14 months)

- water levels dropped in devil’s hole due to irrigation in 1960s and 70s

- most recent 2013 count showed 35 remaining in the wild

- population has many LOF alleles that harm devil’s pupfish reproduction and fitness

LOF

loss of function alleles and deletions in genes associated with sperm motility, stress and hypoxia

Glanville fritillary butterfly

- lives off Finland’s southwest coast

- numerous metapopulations (42 of which have been studied)

- small populations have much inbreeding, and many local extinctions take place

- heterozygosity was measured on 7 polymorphic enzymes at one microsatellite locus in the butterfly genome and a model was constructed to predict the likelihood of extinction (using heterozygosity and ecological factors)

- heterozygosity made up 26% of the variation in extinction risk, which is a very important discovery given that ecological factors do contribute much to extinction variability, but it was thought to be more so than what the investigators thought it to be

- risk of extinction drops dramatically as heterozygosity at the enzyme loci increases

metapopulations

population subunits

Inbreeding affects vs environmental variability

- inbreeding cannot be assumed to be the cause of reduced fitness or population declines

- example: black and white lemurs of Madagascar

- failed to produce offspring from 1991-2001. This was thought to be due to inbreeding

- blood samples of lemurs in the reserve and 3 other outside populations were tested, but the reserve population showed no difference in comparison to the other populations

- the poor reproductive success was attributed to the lack of fruit producing trees that the lemurs relied upon which were destroyed by a cyclone a few years earlier

Butterfly blue

- a perennial shrub

- high level of inbreeding in some populations, but an equal amount of inbreeding depression and inbreeding enhancement

- some showed no affects of inbreeding affects at all

- some inbred, selfing (self-fertilizing) populations have fitness advantages to the extent that they successfully invade and replace outcrossing populations