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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. Genetic drift is the term used in population genetics to refer to the statistical drift over time of gene frequencies in a population due to random sampling effects in the formation of successive generations.