WILL MARK AS BRAINLIESTA wildflower population in Louisiana consists of blue, purple, and pink flowers. Approximately 1/3 of the wildflower population is blue, 1/3 are purple, and 1/3 are pink. A random mudslide kills most of the blue wildflowers.
1. What type of evolution do you think this is? Why?
2. What variations are present in this population?
3. What type of wildflowers is most fit? Who or what decides which wildflowers can reproduce?
4. How do you think the wildflowers population will change? What traits will become more common?

1) Genetic drift/Bottleneck effect

2) Mostly Purple flowers (Bb) and pink flowers (bb). Only a few blue flowers

3) Pink flower (bb) is the fittest. Natural selection is the one that modulates the reproductive rate of each genotype.

4) The most common trait will be pink flowers, followed by purple flowers.

Explanation:

1. What type of evolution do you think this is? Why? Genetic drift.

Genetic drift is the random change that occurs in the allelic frequency of a population through generations. The magnitude of this change is inversely related to the size of the original population. These changes produced by genetic drift accumulate in time and eventually, some alleles get lost, while some others might set. Genetic drift affects a population and reduces its size dramatically due to a disaster -bottleneck effect- or because of a population split -founder effect-. In the exposed example, the mudslide is the disaster that almost eliminated all the blue flowers. The survivors did not have the whole genetic pool of the original population,  the population size might have recovered, but the genetic pool might have not.

2. What variations are present in this population? Mostly Purple flowers (Bb) and pink flowers (bb). Only a few blue flowers are present, but these are the least because they almost disappeared after the disaster.

3. What type of wildflowers is most fit? Who or what decides which wildflowers can reproduce?

Pink flower (bb) is the fittest. Natural selection is the one that modulates the reproductive rate of each genotype.

When talking about fitness or aptitude we are referring to the relative capability of each genotype to survive and pass through the alleles to the following generations. Aptitude is relative to the fittest genotype, and it is only valid in the environment where that genotype is.

Environment influences the probabilities of each of the genotypes to pass through their alleles to the progeny.

Reproductive aptitude is modeled by natural selection (directional selection) according to the interaction genotype-environment. It changes allelic frequencies and influences the destiny of genes through space and time.

4. How do you think the wildflowers population will change? What traits will become more common?

As the directional section is modeling the population after the disaster, the frequencies of the recessive genotype and the frequency of the recessive allele will increase. The most common trait will be pink flowers, followed by purple flowers.