News tagged with genetic diversity
Related topics: genes · proceedings of the national academy of sciences · climate change · genetic variation · genome
The wild relatives of livestock and crops are disappearing
"Transformative change" is needed to prevent a million species going extinct, according to a new report on the world's biodiversity. Based on information gathered over three years from land, freshwater and marine ecosystems, ...
Scientists find high mutation rates within huge, old-growth trees
The towering, hundred-year-old Sitka spruce trees growing in the heart of Vancouver Island's Carmanah Valley appear placid and unchanging.
The preservation of plant biodiversity is the task of the roughly 1,750 gene banks distributed around the world. They store plant samples and sometimes additional phenotypic or genetic information of around 7.4 million accessions ...
Global data resource shows genetic diversity of chickens
A total of 174 chicken breeds are described in a publicly accessible database which scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Neustadt-Mariensee have built up in recent years with ...
Sea otters have low genetic diversity like other threatened species, biologists report
Sea otters have low genetic diversity, which could endanger their health as a species, a UCLA-led team of life scientists has discovered. The findings have implications for the conservation of rare and endangered species, ...
Wheat myth debunked by a major new study
The myth that modern wheat varieties are more heavily reliant on pesticides and fertilisers is debunked by new research published in Nature Plants today.
Lynx in Turkey: Noninvasive sample collection provides insights into genetic diversity
Little is known about the biology and the genetic status of the Caucasian Lynx (Lynx lynx dinniki), a subspecies of the Eurasian lynx distributed across portions of Turkey, the Caucasus region and Iran. To collect baseline ...
Signs of selection in the stomach
Helicobacter pylori, a globally distributed gastric bacterium, is genetically highly adaptable. Microbiologists at LMU have now characterized its population structure in individual patients, demonstrating an important role ...
Dolphin study reveals the genes essential for species' survival
UNSW scientists have added to the growing body of research into genetic markers that are important for animal conservation.
River valleys helped shape current genetic landscape of Han Chinese
The Han Chinese are the world's largest ethnic group, making up 91.6% of modern-day China. As DNA sequencing tools and statistical analyses software have advanced, scientists have been exploring the forces that helped shape ...
Genetic diversity is a level of biodiversity that refers to the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species. It is distinguished from genetic variability, which describes the tendency of genetic characteristics to vary.
The academic field of population genetics includes several hypotheses and theories regarding genetic diversity. The neutral theory of evolution proposes that diversity is the result of the accumulation of neutral substitutions. Diversifying selection is the hypothesis that two subpopulations of a species live in different environments that select for different alleles at a particular locus. This may occur, for instance, if a species has a large range relative to the mobility of individuals within it. Frequency-dependent selection is the hypothesis that as alleles become more common, they become less fit. This is often invoked in host-pathogen interactions, where a high frequency of a defensive allele among the host means that it is more likely that a pathogen will spread if it is able to overcome that allele.