Question

What describes genetic drift?

Answer 1

Genetic drift:

1. Genetic drift is a mechanism by which evolution develops over generations due to change in allele frequencies of a population that occurs by chance.
2. Genetic drift is the random fluctuation in allelic frequency.
3. Genetic drift is caused due to the change in gene frequency.

Types of genetic drift:

Founder effect:

1. This type of genetic drift occurs when some individuals of a population migrate to a new location and colonize there to form a new population.
2. The founder effect reduces the genetic variability of a population and the size of the population.

Population bottleneck:

1. The type of genetic drift which occurs due to catastrophic environmental events, hunting of particular species that are near to extinction, and destruction of habitat.
2. This reduces the size of the population very quickly and genetic variability also.