GENETICS AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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They are more likely to evolve into a new species than other cats due to gene flow.
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They are likely to go extinct because they have so little variation.
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They likely underwent a bottleneck in their history.
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The founder’s effect made it so they have several different subspecies.
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Cheetahs never prosper and winners never cheat.
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Detailed explanation-1: -The first bottleneck event that cheetahs may have undergone occurred around 100, 000 years ago when cheetahs expanded their range into Asia, Europe, and Africa. This range expansion is believed to have occurred rapidly, dispersing the cheetahs over a very large area and thus restricting their ability to exchange genes.
Detailed explanation-2: -As a species, cheetahs have famously low levels of genetic variation. This can probably be attributed to a population bottleneck they experienced around 10, 000 years ago, barely avoiding extinction at the end of the last ice age.
Detailed explanation-3: -Cheetahs are virtual clones, with only one to 10 percent of the genetic variability found in other feline species [source: Begley].
Detailed explanation-4: -Phylogenetic history The cheetah is considered one of the earliest divergences in felid evolution, about 8.5 million years ago, compared to the large cats of the Panthera group, which still shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.