Genetics and Evolution Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The pea experiments were done by Gregor Johann Mendel.

Mendel, an Austrian monk, crossed pea plants in his monastery garden in the 1850s and 1860s. He studied traits that come in contrasting pairs, such as tall or short, round or wrinkled seeds, yellow or green seeds, and found the laws by which they are inherited. He is called the father of genetics.

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan is the Indian agricultural scientist associated with the Green Revolution. George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, invented Velcro after noticing burrs sticking to his dog. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Answer: A

The founder effect is caused by genetic drift.

When a small group leaves a large population to found a new one, its allele frequencies are a chance sample of the parent population's and can differ markedly from them. That random sampling error is genetic drift, and the founder effect is one form of it, as are population bottlenecks. The high frequency of certain inherited disorders in isolated communities is the classic example.

Mutation creates new alleles rather than resampling existing ones. Natural selection changes frequencies non-randomly, according to fitness. Recombination reshuffles alleles into new combinations within individuals but does not by itself change allele frequencies in the population.