In our example, we have Western Snowy Plovers, shorebirds that live along the American West Coast. Following a flood, a particular population of Western Snowy Plovers went from 437 down to just 26. Notably, Western Snowy Plovers are known for having large black spots on their faces, but the population that survived the flood had comparatively smaller facial spots. Assuming that face spot size is a heritable trait, let's answer the following questions:

A: What changes, if any, do you expect in the offspring of Western Snowy Plovers that survived compared to the original population? Given that the trait of facial spots can be inherited and considering the survivors exhibit smaller facial spots, it is expected that future generations will have smaller facial spots compared to the original population since these are the individuals that survived.

B: What special case of genetic drift describes this scenario? This scenario is indicative of a population bottleneck. This occurs when a population sharply reduces in size due to environmental events, which leads to a loss of genetic variation randomly among the survivors.

C: What are two ways genetic diversity could be increased in this population in the future? One method to restore genetic diversity could be through mutation, which can introduce new alleles and thus increase genetic variation over time. Another method could be gene flow, where alleles are brought in from other populations. If there is gene flow between this population and another Western Snowy Plover population that did not go through the population bottleneck, or one that preserved different alleles, genetic variation could be somewhat restored.

More practice after this. Give it a try.