What practice has significantly increased the frequency of the white coat gene in captive populations?
Answer
Deliberate captive breeding programs seeking the aesthetic trait
The high concentration of white tigers seen in zoos today is a direct result of human intervention through selective captive breeding. Because the trait is rare, breeders have actively sought out and mated individuals carrying the recessive gene to ensure the color appears reliably. This selective pressure, driven by human aesthetic preference rather than ecological fitness, has dramatically increased the frequency of the *SLC45A2* gene within the captive gene pool by several orders of magnitude compared to the low frequency found in healthy, naturally evolving wild populations.
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