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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.
Genetic drift is more pronounced in small populations than in large ones Chance deviations from expected results (which cause genetic drift) occur whenever organisms engage in sexual reproduction Genetic drift usually leads to the loss of alleles and reduced genetic variability Population bottleneck: an evolutionary event that occurs when a stressful factor reduces population size greatly and eliminates some alleles from a population o Ex. disease, starvation, drought Founder effect: an ...