Founder's Effect
From RationalWiki
The Founder's Effect, also known as a population bottleneck, is a genetic effect caused by a small group of individuals founding a larger population. Due to the small number of individuals involved, only a few alleles for each gene will be found in the population, limiting short term variation and leading to a very strong historical contingency effect on future evolution in the population.
This can be seen most dramatically in the prevalence of certain illnesses and defects within populations with limited alleles, such as deafness in certain breeds of dog or polydactylity amongst certain Amish communities.[1]
The cheetah is an example of a species affected by the Founder's Effect, having come close to extinction during the last Ice Age. The long term results of the resulting small gene pool include common birth defects and low levels of fertility.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
You can help by expanding it.
