Please help Anthropology question about population evolving?

Question

Of a population of 10,000 individuals, 5,000 are the carriers of a blood factor known as Wu. 2,500 are homozygous for the Wu factor. The rest do not have the allele. Is this population evolving?

Answer 1

There is not enough information.  There is no information on selection advantage.  All populations are evolving but the current frequency of a single allele doesn't indicate that.

Answer 2

No, your population is not evolving. By using the Hardy-Weinberg population equilibrium equation, we can see that in this hypothetical population evolution is not occurring if certain conditions are met: the population is large and mating is random; there is no migration in or out of the population; there are no mutation; and there is nothing selecting against the allele. The Hardy-Weinberg equation basically predicts (in the very abstract sense) allele frequencies in populations meeting the above criteria. Basically, with your problem you already have the allele frequencies, so you just need to see the percent of homozygous dominant (25/100), homozygous recessive (25/100), and heterozygous (50/100). You can easily turn these into decimals (.25), (.25), and (.50). If the frequencies add together to one, your basic equation is balanced and your hypothetical population is not evolving. For a more detailed breakdown, check out Wikipedia on Hardy-Weinberg population equilibrium or any intro biological anthropology text bok should have a good discussion of the principles involved.