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Red Lynx

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We're all Homo here
Evolution
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Relevant Hominids
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Plain Monkey Business

Red Lynx is a population genetics simulator written in client-side Javascript by Dr. Reed A. Cartwright. It involves the manipulation of a number of evolutionary forces to explore their effects on the proportion of two alleles –A and a– in the population.[1]

Variables[edit]

The user has control over a number of variables in the simulation:

Name Description Minimum Value Maximum Value
Generations The number of generations that the simulation runs for 0 10000
Population Size The size of the population in the simulation 10 1000000
Initial Frequency The initial frequency of allele A 0% 100%
Selection Strength The selection strength in favour of allele A -1 1
Dominance How dominant allele A is -2 2
A → a Mutation Rate The chance of A mutating into a 0 .01
a → A Mutation Rate The chance of a mutating into A 0 .01
Migration Rate The rate of migration into the system being modelled 0% 100%
Migrant Allele Frequency The percentage of migrating organisms that carry the allele A 0% 100%

Examples[edit]

Default settings[edit]

Under the default settings, the frequency of A is set at 50% and there is no selection pressure. You can experiment with unadulterated Genetic drift, like so:

LynxDrift.png

You can then alter the population size and number of generations, to see how they change what is observed.

Selection pressure[edit]

By decreasing the initial frequency down to 1%, increasing the selection pressure to, say, 10-3 (1.e-3) and raising both the population and the number of generations to their maximums you can see (after a possibly considerable wait) the shape of the curve produced by the action of positive selection from a small starting population:

LynxSelection.png

See also[edit]

Icon fun.svg For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Red lynx.

External links[edit]

References[edit]