What Are Evolutionary Forces Affecting Genetic Variation?

The central goal in evolutionary genetics is to understand how different evolutionary forces have an impact in shaping genetic variation throughout the genome (Hellmann et al., 2005). Among those evolutionary forces, demographic fluctuations, such as bottlenecks, will cause genome wide variation to deviate from the neutral or usual model (Li and Durbin, 2011). Specifically, determining the effect of selection on genetic variation has been prominent among scientists since a long time ago (Phung et al., 2016). As a result, A large body of empirical and theoretical work has supported that selection can shift the distribution of a trait in a population over time (Li and Durbin, 2011). Selection can occur naturally or artificially; according to Elliott Sober, the principle of natural selection is, If A is fitter than B in a population in which no other evolutionary causes are at work, and the traits are perfectly …show more content…
Heliconius live in tropical rain forests, and are known for their long-life spans and stable populations (Martin et al., 2016). In this experiment, they have investigated a data from 59 Heliconius melpomene individual, and an additional 21 sample from 11 related species (Martin et al., 2016). Moreover, they have identified four large populations and explored the genetic variation among those species with describing various selective and neutral processes (Martin et al., 2016). By using multiple linear regression approach, they have found out that selection reduces diversity at linked neutral sites (Martin et al., 2016). Another study has been conducted to investigate natural selection driving the evolution of reproductive isolation in an Australian wildflower, Senecio lautus. Their results suggested that natural selection can create strong reproductive barriers that differentiate populations with potential to interbreed (Richards et al.,