Re: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:22 PM, David Clounch <david.clounch@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a question.
>
>> If you go back far enough, you should have a single ancestral pair for
>> all modern humans.
>
> 1. Would that be true of all phyla that require sexual reproduction?
>

The statement does not mean that there was only one pair of
individuals at that time. It only means that there is only one pair of
individuals at that time who have descendents living today. All the
other individuals contemporary with that ancestral pair do not have
any descendents still living today. This sort of attrition or
"turnover" is inevitable in almost any real type of population
genetics scenerio. Somewhere in an old seminar presentation, I have a
figure that makes this easy to see. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Doug Hayworth
Rockford, IL

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Received on Wed Feb 11 17:49:10 2009