Evoultion Lab 1- Ghazal, Heidi, and Lily (Team Biobeads)

1.     In Lab 1 we tested our hypothesis which was after ten generations some allele frequencies will increase while others will decrease or disappear due to genetic drift. Our prediction is that over ten generations we will see an increase and a decrease in certain alleles. Our null hypothesis is that there will be no change in allele frequency after ten generations. If alleles' frequencies fluctuate after ten generations then genetic drift has acted upon the population. In order to do this we represent the alleles by beads of various colors: Red, Clear, Blue, and White. A gene pool of 100 alleles were created, and each allele was represented equally.  We did this by adding 25 beads of each color (four colors total) into a cup.  Next this gene pool was randomly split in half without looking to prevent color bias from the researchers, each half become a 'population', A and B.  However, since our group was small we only worked with one population instead of two, so below are the data collected by our group for Population A. 

2.

Figure 1. A graph of population A from generation 1 to 10. Each bead is a model for a different allele in the population. Here one can see the increase and decrease of certain alleles over time.

Figure 2. A graph of population A David's group from generation 1 to 10. Each bead is a model for a different allele in the population.

3. After reviewing the data our group has concluded that our hypothesis was correct in that over time genetic drift would occur in both populations. In our population, we started out with around the same number of colors of each bead but over time the white and clear beads increased while the red and blue beads decreased. This model demonstrates that genetic drift happened in our population. We observed a similar trend in David's population A as well.

4.

 Figure 3. Calculations for Chi Squared statistics for population A. #>P=reject

 Df= 3 Chi Square value=23.15            p=7.82

Figure 4. Calculations for Chi Squared statistics for David's group population A. #>P=reject

Df= 3 Chi Square value=11.63           p=7.82

Since our chi square value for our population A (23.15) and David's population A (11.63) is greater than 7.82 we can reject our null hypothesis and conclude that there was a significant change in alleles in both population.