Essentials of Genetics 9th Edition by Michael Palladino William Klug, Michael Cummings, Charlotte Spencer

Exercise 1

Population geneticists study changes in the nature and amount of genetic variation in populations, the distribution of different genotypes, and how forces such as selection and drift act on genetic variation to bring about evolutionary change in populations and the formation of new species. From the explanation given in the chapter, what answers would you propose to the following fundamental questions?
(a) How do we know how much genetic variation is in a population?
(b) How do geneticists detect the presence of genetic variation as different alleles in a population?
(c) How do we know whether the genetic structure of a population is static or dynamic?
(d) How do we know when populations have diverged to the point that they form two different species?
(e) How do we know the age of the last common ancestor shared by two species?