Population Genetics
In population genetics, a population bottleneck occurs when the effective population size, Ne, sharply decreases to a small percentage of the original. The immediate effect of a population bottleneck is to decrease genetic diversity, promoting the effects of stochastic genetic drift over natural selection. In the long-term, repeated population bottlenecks can severely decrease population fitness: deleterious alleles are able to accumulate especially where the time interval between bottlenecks does not allow for the generation of new alleles through mutation.
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Famous quotes containing the word population:
“The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)