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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.
A slightly different form of bottleneck can occur if a small group becomes reproductively (e.g., geographically) separated from the main population, such as through a founder event, e.g., if a few members of a species successfully colonize a new isolated island, or from small captive breeding programs such as animals at a zoo.
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] Genetic drift is the major source of decrease of genetic diversity within populations which drives fixation and can potentially lead to speciation events.
The founder effect is a special case of a population bottleneck, occurring when a small group in a population splinters off from the original population and forms a new one. The random sample of alleles in the just formed new colony is expected to grossly misrepresent the original population in at least some respects. [44]
The effective population size (N e) is the size of an idealised population that would experience the same rate of genetic drift as the real population. [1] Idealised populations are those following simple one-locus models that comply with assumptions of the neutral theory of molecular evolution.
An example of inbreeding depression is shown in the image. In this case, a is the recessive allele which has negative effects. In order for the a phenotype to become active, the gene must end up as homozygous aa because in the geneotype Aa, the A takes dominance over the a and the a does not have any effect. Some recessive genes result in ...
Some models for migration inherently include nonrandom mating (Wahlund effect, for example). For those models, the Hardy–Weinberg proportions will normally not be valid. Small population size can cause a random change in allele frequencies. This is due to a sampling effect, and is called genetic drift. Sampling effects are most important when ...
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology.Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and population structure.