Collard lizards exhibit a wide variety of pigmentation patterns on their throat
ID: 77874 • Letter: C
Question
Collard lizards exhibit a wide variety of pigmentation patterns on their throat patch. The arrangement of colors on the patch is genetically determined by a single locus. These lizards have a strong preference to mate with lizards that have a throat patch color different than their own. Researchers genotyped many lizards at the throat-color locus along with 12 other loci in the genome that were unlinked to the throat-color locus. What do you predict they observed about levels of heterozygosity (i.e. the frequency of heterozygotes in the population) at the throat-patch locus relative to the other loci? Why do you make this prediction?Explanation / Answer
In this case, level of heterozygosity increases for the throat patch color locus compared to all the other loci tested.
This is an example for nonrandom negative assortative mating. It means mating is preferred between male and female of different phenotype. This kind of mating increases the frequency of heterozygotes.
The opposite kind of mating is called nonrandom positive assortative mating. It means males and females having same phenotypes preferentially mate. In this kind of mating, results in increased homozygosity and decreased heterozygosity.