Frequent Causes of Genetic Drift

One frequent cause of a Genetic Drift, is when a bottleneck in the population occurs. This means that a good amount of people die off, or cannot breed with each other anymore. This will cause the population to decrease drastically. It also makes the rare alleles decrease within their gene pool size. So this limits how many genes and people that will be in the population. This is how you keep certain blood lines from being in a population. This also causes them to not be able to reproduce babies with others to keep their bloodline line present.

Another frequent cause for Genetic Drift, is the physical distribution, where a certain species has the same genetic makeup in the whole range, and lives at a higher elevation that has a different climate effect and condition than the others at the opposite part. The higher elevation has a different allele frequency than the other section. Distribution can be saved over wider physical areas and different forces will affect the allele frequencies in different ways. Now if the species on one end connect and start mating, this will make more variations of the species. But if the other side becomes big enough so that interbreeding between the other species of opposite kinds gets smaller and less likely to happen, then these two species become distinct genetically by one another.

How is genetic drift similar to sampling error?, because both represent sample exhibits that have different results for an entire population. Sometimes the results can be correct, but 9 times out of ten they are wrong. Say we had 50 white bugs and 50 red bugs and a scientist decided to study 10 worms from the population. By the sample being so small the alleles that are passed throughout the group of ten may not be even as the they would in a group of 100 of them. If the group has more white the red, the alleles that will be presented will be off. Like with genetic drift, if there are 10 white birds and 10 blue birds, and all have equal chances of reproduction and survival, then a storm comes and kills 8 white and 8 blue, this leaves two white and two blue, and then one bird gets sick and dies, now there only two white and one blue. This is an example of genetic drift and can be similar to a sampling error.

I learned that the changes in species vary by population, genetic drift and also by the frequency of alleles being present. I also learned that over time if you have two different species in one area, over time they will adapt and become a larger amount that takes the place of the dominate similar species to them. This is how species change and also populate.

References

Kenney, C., & Harris, B. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2015.

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Created on May 24, 2015 by Lionel Sharpe || Professor Lindsay Barone