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Genetic drift is a change in gene frequency within a population due to chance instead of natural selection. If the population is small, then there can be considerable genetic drift, which can change the gene frequency quite drastically. Think of the genetic variation of a population as a bowl of jelly beans with all sorts of colors, representing healthy genetic variation.
A founder effect occurs when a new colony is started by a few members of the original population. This small population size means that the colony may have: 1  reduced genetic variation from the original population.2  a non-random sample of the genes in the original population.ottlenecks and Founder Effects. Genetic drift can cause big losses of genetic variation for small populations. Population bottlenecks occur when a populations size is reduced for at least one generation.