As part of the field trip, I got to see and experience what the reality of what population genetics applies to in the real world. Going to all of the various field sites for the Mimulus guttatus populations, it was very obvious to me how these very different sites could favor a large variety of different alleles across the whole population, and how these populations could face a myriad of dispersal and survival challenges throughout their lives that impact the fixation of new alleles and the removal of old ones. The fact that such water-dependent flowers and survive in such a harsh environment as th serpentine barrens was very interesting to me!