Biology

Kenyon Oconnell

21 April, 23:22

A population of birds, the Greater Prairie Chicken of Illinois, underwent a population bottleneck due to overhunting and loss of habitat. The resulting population had too little genetic variation after the bottleneck. Which scenario would most likely allow the prairie chicken population to recover rather than go extinct after the bottleneck? A) Bring in new species of birds from other geographic regions to compete with the prairie chickens. B) Separation of the recovering population of prairie chickens into smaller subsets would ensure that at least one population would survive. C) Removing food variety so that the recovering population of prairie chickens has a single food source that they do not have to search for. D) Gene flow from other prairie chicken populations would provide an opportunity for members to interbreed in the recovering prairie chicken population.