QUESTION 1: You are part of a summer research project studying a fish species in which males can have either silver or orange tails. You discover that males with orange tails attract more mating partners than silver-tailed males.
- Assuming that tail color is a heritable trait, how do you expect that the relative frequency of orange and silver-tailed males will change over evolutionary time?
- How might natural selection influence the relative abundance of orange and silver-tailed males in this species?
- Outline an experiment that would allow you to test the hypothesis outlined in (ii), and briefly explain how the outcome of this experiment would help address the question.
QUESTION 2: As part of your work with NYC Public Health, you are tasked with tracking an emerging outbreak of feline coronavirus in the wild cats of New York City. This disease, transferred by fecal-oral contact, is not infectious to humans, but is closely related with the virus responsible for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in human populations. Describe how you could use DNA-based molecular forensics to track the spread of the virus, as well as possible genetic factors associated with disease susceptibility.