What is the Difference Between Gene Flow and Genetic Drift What are the Similarities Between Gene Flow and Genetic DriftĤ. Genetic drift occurs through founder effect and bottlenecks. Since genetic drift is a natural process, it is also called the random drift. However, gene flow allows the origination of new species by the gene transfer. Gene flow allows the combination of gene pools of two populations. The main difference between gene flow and genetic drift is that gene flow refers to the transfer of genes between populations whereas genetic drift is the variation of allele frequencies in small populations, allowing the disappearance of alleles from the population. However, both gene flow and genetic drift have longer term influences on evolution. Gene flow and genetic drift are two processes that decrease the genetic variation within a population. At the same time, however, the less readily that exchange may be detected when studying the populations involved since it is difficult to recognize the movement of alleles between populations that essentially are identical in both populations.Main Difference – Gene Flow vs Genetic Drift The more similar two populations are then the more readily alleles may be exchanged. These two populations can be genetically similar already, such as the same species, or instead can be genetically dissimilar such as different species. The primary consequence of genetic migration is to make two populations more genetically similar: Greater similarly in terms of what alleles are present as well as the frequency of those alleles between the two populations. In addition, populations can be of different sizes where substantial allele movement from a larger population to a smaller one can result in the smaller population's allele frequencies becoming dominated by the frequencies seen in the larger population. It is difficult for the populations to in fact remain distinct, however, given such high levels of gene exchange. If such movement is unbiased then the impact of the movement will be to make the two populations more genetically similar, which at an extreme means that the frequencies of each allele will be identical going from one population to the other. When an individual moves from one population to the other it carries its alleles with it. See also simply the concept of gene flow.įigure legend: Shapes refer to differences in genotype among members of each population with underlying allelic differences. Note that the concept of genetic migration is closely associated with that of sex, whether the meiotic sexual reproduction that one observes in eukaryotes or the less-conspicuous or thorough gene exchange that one sees among microorganisms, e.g., bacterial sex. In each case this potentially results in changes in allele frequencies within populations. Thus, alleles can leave populations, as individuals move from one place to another relative to their gene pools, while individuals similarly can enter gene pools that they previously were found outside of it. Migration is one of the violations of Hardy-Weinberg assumptions (see 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). Thus, one can think of genetic migration as migration of alleles from parents to offspring where the two parents are not really members of the same population.įigure legend: Schematic representation of genetic migration, a.k.a., gene flow, as allele movement into as well as out of populations. In the latter case, migration does not necessarily involve the actual, physical migration of organisms from one place to another but, instead, may entail matings that take place between members of different species in locations where the ranges of each participant happen to overlap (i.e., sympatric populations). Such genetic migration, however, can also involve the movement of alleles between species, a process that is known, in different settings, as introgression or horizontal gene transfer (and also lateral gene transfer). Migration, in a genetic or evolutionary sense, can be a consequence of movement of members of the same species from one population of that species to another, thereby entailing actual, physical movement.
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