Polar Bear Experiment Hypothesis

Would there be a difference in the fitness of polar bears due to their fur length in the Artic region? The scientific name of a polar bear is Ursus maritimus, meaning that it is a “marine mammal” (National Wildlife Federation). Even though polar bears do spend time on land, they tend to spend most of their time in the sea, hence why they are considered a “marine mammal”. Their fur is “hollow and reflects light” and this allows for the bear to have white fur phenotype(Lockwood,S.). Not only does the thick white fur serve as protection of the cold, but also to help the polar bears camouflage in the cold Artic area (National Wildlife Federation). In the polar bear population, the dominant allele codes for long white fur whereas the recessive allele codes for short white fur. The polar bears also have heterozygous alleles and those also code from having long white fur. In this experiment, I will be test the difference of longer fur versus the shorter fur. I will do this by decreasing the allele frequency in the dominant allele as well as the recessive allele to show how dominant …show more content…
Alternative Hypothesis:
A change in allele frequency will have an effect on the fitness of a polar bear in having the dominant long fur.

The figure above shows the difference between the frequency of hair length throughout 5 trials in three different simulations. The y-axis is the P(A) is the frequency of the alleles and the x-axis indicates the three different simulations. Simulation one is the control group, Simulation 2 is refereeing to the dominant allele (AA 0.5), whereas Simulation 3 indicates the recessive allele (aa 0.5). In this experiment simulation two changed from 1.0AA-> 0.5 AA and simulation three changed from 1.0aa-> 0.5aa. The bars indicate the average P(A) (average in the center of the bars) in the simulations including a standard deviation