A transplant experiment, is an
experiment
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...
to test the effect of
environment
Environment most often refers to:
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* Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally
* Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
by moving two species from their native environments into a common environment. The name was originally applied to experiments on plants, but is now equally applied to animals such as lizards and ants, and other organisms.
A reciprocal transplant experiment involves introducing organisms from each of two environments into the other; the approach can be extended to more than two environments if required.
Transplant experiments are often used to test if there is a
genetic component to differences in populations. Advances in
molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...
have provided researchers with the ability to study
genetic variation more directly. However, transplant experiments still have the advantages of being simple and requiring little technology. On the other hand, they may require considerable time and labour, and the number of test organisms is often relatively limited.
Common garden methods can be improved by combining evidence with
genomic studies, the use of dense marker panel data, and modern statistical methods.
See also
*
Ecotype
In evolutionary ecology, an ecotype,Greek: ''οίκος'' = home and ''τύπος'' = type, coined by Göte Turesson in 1922 sometimes called ecospecies, describes a genetically distinct geographic variety, population, or race within a specie ...
*
Field experiment
Field experiments are experiments carried out outside of laboratory settings.
They randomly assign subjects (or other sampling units) to either treatment or control groups in order to test claims of causal relationships. Random assignment help ...
*
Genotype and
phenotype
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological pr ...
*
Natural experiment
A natural experiment is an empirical study in which individuals (or clusters of individuals) are exposed to the experimental and control conditions that are determined by nature or by other factors outside the control of the investigators. The pro ...
References
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Biology experiments