Wiktionary
n. (context genetics evolutionary theory English) An overall shift of allele distribution in an isolated population, due to random fluctuations in the frequency of individual alleles of the genes.
Wikipedia
Genetic drift (also known as allelic drift or the Sewall Wright effect after biologist Sewall Wright) is the change in the frequency of a gene variant ( allele) in a population due to random sampling of organisms. The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces. A population's allele frequency is the fraction of the copies of one gene that share a particular form. Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and thereby reduce genetic variation.
When there are few copies of an allele, the effect of genetic drift is larger, and when there are many copies the effect is smaller. In the early 20th century, vigorous debates occurred over the relative importance of natural selection versus neutral processes, including genetic drift. Ronald Fisher, who explained natural selection using Mendelian genetics, held the view that genetic drift plays at the most a minor role in evolution, and this remained the dominant view for several decades. In 1968, population geneticist Motoo Kimura rekindled the debate with his neutral theory of molecular evolution, which claims that most instances where a genetic change spreads across a population (although not necessarily changes in phenotypes) are caused by genetic drift acting on neutral mutations. There is currently a scientific debate about how much of unguided evolution has been caused by natural selection, and how much by genetic drift.
Usage examples of "genetic drift".
And they were different, profoundly different, sharing interests and enthusiasms perfectly incommunicable to any other generation, as if genetic drift or disruptive selection had produced a bimodal distribution, so that members of the old Homo sapiens were now coinhabiting the planet with a new Homo ares, creatures tall and slender and graceful and utterly at home, chattering to each other in a profound self-absorption as they did the work that would make Hellas Basin into a sea.
Instead of all that genetic drift, the descolada must do the drifting.
In that case the process of genetic drift would be reinforced by Darwinian selection, which would tend to accentuate the trait—.
Dark skin gives some protection against soft radiation, though I suppose genetic drift, happenstance, has been at work, too.
Evolution, though, takes its own blind courses, and selection working on random mutations and genetic drift can go in curious directions.
I just want to track genetic drift since this species was planted by the Buyur.