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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 ]
Genetic hitchhiking. Genetic hitchhiking, also called genetic draft or the hitchhiking effect, [1] is when an allele changes frequency not because it itself is under natural selection, but because it is near another gene that is undergoing a selective sweep and that is on the same DNA chain. When one gene goes through a selective sweep, any ...
The neutral theory of molecular evolution holds that most evolutionary changes occur at the molecular level, and most of the variation within and between species are due to random genetic drift of mutant alleles that are selectively neutral. The theory applies only for evolution at the molecular level, and is compatible with phenotypic ...
Neutral mutations are changes in DNA sequence that are neither beneficial nor detrimental to the ability of an organism to survive and reproduce. In population genetics, mutations in which natural selection does not affect the spread of the mutation in a species are termed neutral mutations. Neutral mutations that are inheritable and not linked ...
In biology, evolution is the process of change in all forms of life over generations, and evolutionary biology is the study of how evolution occurs. Biological populations evolve through genetic changes that correspond to changes in the organisms ' observable traits. Genetic changes include mutations, which are caused by damage or replication ...
Genetic distance. 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.
Stochastic drift. In probability theory, stochastic drift is the change of the average value of a stochastic (random) process. A related concept is the drift rate, which is the rate at which the average changes. For example, a process that counts the number of heads in a series of fair coin tosses has a drift rate of 1/2 per toss.
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 ]