What is founder effect? | Class 12 Biology Chapter Evolution, Evolution NCERT Solutions

There are two forms of genetic drift and founder effect is one of them. Founder effect occurs when the small group of individuals (called founder’s population) become isolated from the large population to form a colony. Population in the new settlement like; Larger the founder population the more likely it will resemble the parent population. The smaller number of the individuals as founders might not possess all the alleles and might display different frequency. Formation of different genotype in the new settlement is called the founders effect.

Note*: The founding individuals may not represent the entire genetic diversity of the original population, i.e. the alleles in the founder population will be present at the different frequencies and some may be missing altogether.