Question

Assertion: Cheetah is an example of bottleneck effect
Reason: Bottleneck effect is when the population is subjected to near extinction by natural disaster or slaughter by humans.
A. Both assertion and reason are correct and reason is the correct explanation for assertion.
B. Both assertion and reason are correct but reason is not the correct explanation for assertion.
C. Assertion is correct but Reason is incorrect.
D. Assertion is incorrect but reason is correct.

Answer 1

In conservation biology and in the sense of agriculture (biological and pest control), population bottlenecks play an important role. In American bison, greater prairie chickens, northern elephant seals, golden hamsters, and cheetahs, researchers have observed population bottlenecks.

Complete Answer:
- Cheetahs face the threat of extinction from climate change, human hunting, and habitat loss, which is reducing their population size. The genes of the Cheetahs themselves are also a threat to their continued survival.
- Cheetahs have a poor reproductive success rate , meaning that they are not always able to reproduce as a species. With fewer heirs, the population can neither expand nor adapt to environmental changes.
- Owing to natural disasters (such as earthquakes , floods, fires, or droughts) or human activity (such as genocide), a population bottleneck is a sharp decrease in the size of a population. The variance in a population's gene pool may be decreased by such events.
- After a case, with a correspondingly smaller genetic diversity, a smaller population (of animals / people) remains to pass on genes to future generations of offspring.
- As random mutations occur, genetic diversity remains lower, only slowly increasing over time. Female cheetahs appear to be at least as promiscuous as their male counterparts, according to a May 2007 report.
- Females also mate with many separate males when they are fertile and then are likely to bear a single litter of cubs fathered by many males, allowing only half-siblings to several of the cubs within a single litter.
- For the survival of these vulnerable species, this finding has significant consequences. So, the Cheetah is an example of the influence of the bottle neck.

The correct Answer is option (A) Assertion and Reason are correct and reason is the correct explanation for assertion.

Note: About 100,000 years ago, the first bottleneck event that cheetahs could have encountered occurred when cheetahs extended their range into Asia, Europe , and Africa. It is assumed that this range expansion happened quickly, dispersing the cheetahs over a very wide region and thereby limiting their ability to exchange genes.About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, near the end of the last ice age, the second probable bottleneck event happened. The cheetahs of North America and Europe went extinct in this bottleneck, leaving only Asian and African populations of the species existing.