genetic drift

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genetic drift The random fluctuations of gene frequencies in a population such that the genes among offspring are not a perfectly representative sampling of the parental genes. Although drift occurs in all populations, its effects are most marked in very small isolated populations, in which it gives rise to the random fixation of alternative alleles, so that the variation originally present within single (ancestral) populations comes to appear as variation between reproductively isolated populations.

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genetic drift

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