Reference no: EM132416128

1. Describe the interplay between gene flow, genetic drift, and selection. Under what circumstances does one overwhelm the others? Selection can affect allele frequencies at loci affecting fitness, but can selection also limit gene flow at unlinked neutral loci?

2. Kimura's equation (k = µ) provides a powerful prediction for neutral genetic variation. However, this prediction may not hold for neutral regions linked to regions that are subjected to selection. How might background selection and rates of recombination affect the substitution rates for neutral alleles?

3. How can expectations from coalescence theory allow us to detect the effects of selection? Describe neutrality tests including the Ewens-Watterson and Tajima's D tests. How can these tests be confounded by violations of the assumption of constant population size? How might we distinguish the effects of historical bottlenecks from the effects of selection?

4. What can variation in levels of genomic differentiation (i.e. speciation islands, FST outliers) tell us about the effects of selection during divergence among lineages? What else besides selection can cause FST outliers? What would be a good way to confirm that these genomic regions were responsible for adaptation to different habitats?