AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Genetic drift is the change in frequencies of alleles in a population due to chance. If a population is small then chance could determine whether a neutral allele becomes extinct or increases in frequency to fixation.

Detailed explanation-2: -Small populations tend to lose genetic diversity more quickly than large populations due to stochastic sampling error (i.e., genetic drift). This is because some versions of a gene can be lost due to random chance, and this is more likely to occur when populations are small.

Detailed explanation-3: -Every population experiences genetic drift, but small populations feel its effects more strongly. Genetic drift does not take into account an allele’s adaptive value to a population, and it may result in loss of a beneficial allele or fixation (rise to 100% frequency) of a harmful allele in a population.

Detailed explanation-4: -Genetic drift takes place when the occurrence of variant forms of a gene, called alleles, increases and decreases by chance over time. These variations in the presence of alleles are measured as changes in allele frequencies.