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Founder effect: The original population (left) could give rise to different founder populations (right). In population genetics, the founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It was first fully outlined by Ernst Mayr in 1942 ...
Genetic drift, also known as random genetic drift, allelic drift or the Wright effect, [1] is the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant in a population due to random chance. [ 2 ] Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and thereby reduce genetic variation . [ 3 ]
Muller's ratchet relies on genetic drift, and turns faster in smaller populations because in such populations deleterious mutations have a better chance of fixation. Therefore, it sets the limits to the maximum size of asexual genomes and to the long-term evolutionary continuity of asexual lineages. [ 4 ]
The size of a population is important because individuals colonizing a new habitat likely contain only a small sample of the genetic variation of the original population. This promotes divergence due to strong selective pressures, leading to the rapid fixation of an allele within the descendant population.
Appearance. In population genetics and population ecology, population size (usually denoted N) is a countable quantity representing the number of individual organisms in a population. Population size is directly associated with amount of genetic drift, and is the underlying cause of effects like population bottlenecks and the founder effect. [ 1 ]
[5] [6] [7] Alternatively, larger populations are affected less by genetic drift because drift is measured using the equation 1/2N, with "N" referring to population size; it takes longer for alleles to become fixed because "N" is higher. One example of large populations showing greater adaptive evolutionary ability is the red flour beetle.
Genetic distance is a measure of the genetic divergence between species or between populations within a species, whether the distance measures time from common ancestor or degree of differentiation. [2] Populations with many similar alleles have small genetic distances. This indicates that they are closely related and have a recent common ancestor.
It defines evolution as the change in allelic frequencies within a population caused by genetic drift, gene flow between sub populations, and natural selection. Natural selection is emphasised as the most important mechanism of evolution; large changes are the result of the gradual accumulation of small changes over long periods of time. [39] [40]