Natural Selection, Genetic Bottleneck, or Founder Effect

Founder Effect

When Christopher Columbus came to the Americas, he randomly chose 3 chickens from Spain to bring along. These 3 chickens were the only chickens to breed in the Americas for hundreds of years.

Natural Selection

Organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. Their genetic profile becomes more common in the population over time.

Genetic Bottleneck

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan is estimated to have killed over 500 water buffalo in the Philippines. Water buffalo are used in the Philippines to plow crops. Many of the water buffalo that perished were concentrated near farms. These animals are more muscular than buffalo allowed to roam free.

Founder Effect

The Afrikaner population of Dutch settlers in South Africa is descended from a few colonists. Today, the Afrikaner population has an unusually high frequency of the gene for Huntington's disease.

Founder Effect

The reduced genetic diversity that results when a population is descended from a small number of colonizing ancestors that interbreed.

Natural Selection

Camouflage allows many species to blind into their environment. Those individuals with the best camouflage are not eaten by predators as often as those with poorer camouflage.

Genetic Bottleneck

A catastrophe kills many individuals in a population, leaving a small number of individuals to interbreed. These individuals may have different genes than the original population.

Founder Effect

More severe illnesses exist among certain Jewish groups. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, have a particularly high chance of suffering from Tay-Sachs disease, a fatal condition in young children.

Genetic Bottleneck

During a hike a man accidentally steps on a population of rare beetles that were in the path, leaving just four of the original twenty.

Natural Selection

Antibiotic resistance occurs when certain bacteria with a mutation that allows them to survive exposure to antibiotic chemicals live on and reproduce. Quickly, a fully resistant generation develops.