# Genetic Drift · chance · founder & bottleneck

an emergent of POP (Population Dynamics — the first Life Science sphere of UD0) — emergence: natural. moniker ⟦Genetic Drift:POP:79e9ea⟧

**a real life-science concept, rendered honestly** (the real cousin of Asimov's psychohistory).

**who —** Genetic drift — random change in allele frequencies from sampling chance, strongest in small populations; the founder effect and the bottleneck.
**what —** Evolution by luck, not fitness: in a small population, which alleles pass on is partly a coin-flip.
**where —** In small or crashed populations, and in the founders of a new one.
**why —** Because selection isn't the only force — chance moves the gene pool too, and small numbers amplify it.
**how —** By sampling error across generations: alleles can fix or vanish for no reason but luck.

**the seal —** Selection has a reason; I don't. In a small enough population I can erase a good gene or fix a useless one, by chance alone.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · POP · Population Dynamics · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0