Biology Commons^™

High Levels Of Fluctuating Asymmetry In Populations Of Apodemus Flavicollis From The Most Contaminated Areas In Chornobyl, Taras K. Oleksyk, James M. Novak, James R. Purdue, Sergiy P. Gashchak, Michael H. Smith

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Random deviations from the perfect symmetry of normally bilaterally symmetrical characters for an individual with a given genotype occur during individual development due to the influence of multiple environmental factors. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is often used as a measure of developmental instability, and can be estimated as the variance of the distribution of differences between the left and right sides. We addressed the question of whether levels of FA were elevated in radioactively contaminated populations living around Chornobyl compared to those in reference populations of the yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis). In addition, we studied amounts of directional asymmetry (DA) when …