How might measuring the average heterozygosity at a number of loci in the Swedish snake population allow you to test whether the introduced snakes had actually bred successfully with the inbred Swedish snakes.

a) If you measured the total lifetime Darwinian fitnesses of all the snakes in the Swedish population, how would the mean fitness of the snakes in the Swedish population differ before and after the introduction of the snakes from the outside population?

b) This type of experiment, where members of an outbred populations are introduced to an inbred population as mating partners, is sometimes called a “genetic rescue”. How might measuring the average heterozygosity at a number of loci in the Swedish snake population allow you to test whether the introduced snakes had actually bred successfully with the inbred Swedish snakes?

c) Is there evidence that random genetic drift in the inbred Swedish population had led to a decline in mean fitness that was sufficient to cause the extinction of the population? Here, I am asking about the Swedish population before the outbred snakes were introduced. What is the evidence for a decline in mean fitness, if you believe this happened?

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