African Leopard Essay

The African Leopard is becoming more threatened as humans encroach on their habitat and poach them for their coats. A black variation of the African leopard exists, leaving some individuals with a much darker coat. The allele associated with this phenotype is “a” recessive allele and shows presence in an individual when it is homozygous. The normal patterned leopard coat is expressed by the dominant “A” allele and shows presence in an individual when it is homozygous as well as heterozygous. The African Leopard generally lives in bush and forest areas (awf). If people were to push all African Leopard populations into darkly covered forests over fifty generations, how would this affect the allele frequency of these populations? This simulation …show more content…
The darkness created from tree cover ultimately caused less death by poaching for the darker coated leopards than the normal brighter variation. The darker colored leopards also had an easier time hunting prey since they were able to better camouflaged with its surroundings. These results prove that change in habitat does in fact effect the allele frequencies of the African Leopard populations since the recessive “a” allele became much better for survival compared to the dominant “A” allele. If the habitat had not changed, the allele frequency would still be much higher for the dominant “A” allele. In this simulation, natural selection shows that since the darker coated leopards were able to live longer and reproduce more frequently, the allele frequency of the recessive “a” allele greatly increased and the less favored dominant “A” allele decreased. This concept is key for understanding how evolution works and further supports the acceptance of the alternate hypothesis. In conculation, the change in habitat of the African Leopard caused by poaching and human encroachment does in fact have an effect on the populations’ allele