Question

You have two populations of beetles, one with 100 individuals and one with 500 individuals. Two

trees randomly fall - one on each population of beetles. Each tree kills 50 beetles in each
population and causes genetic drift. Which of the following is true?

Answer 1

The tree falling on the smaller population will have a bigger effect on allele frequency

Step-by-step explanation:

The falling trees each killed 50 beetles. In the smaller population of 100 beetles this killed 50% of the beetles (50 out of 100). In the larger population the tree only killed 10% of the beetles (50 out of 500). Because the tree killed a higher percentage of beetles in the smaller population, it also changed the allele frequency by a bigger percent. So, genetic drift has a much bigger effect on allele frequency in smaller populations.