4 ms·
800 years is also a lot of time for genetic drift to occur. If it’s not being actively selected for anymore, it can end up being in increasingly smaller parts o
by geneticdrift 4y ago
800 years is also a lot of time for genetic drift to occur. If it’s not being actively selected for anymore, it can end up being in increasingly smaller parts of the population.
- kzrdude 4y agoThanks for putting it as 800 years. In fact, we are closer to the black death now than they were to the justinian plague. Just a small thing that was interesting to notice.
- Maursault 4y agoGenetic drift occurs due to random chance, unlike natural selection. Presumably, the population that survived Justinian's Plague had beneficial mutations. While it is possible that 40 generations is long enough for genetic drift as populations mix and become heterogeneous, the surviving population was homogeneous in regards to those beneficial mutations. The bacterium Yersinia pestis never actually went away, so plague deaths continued uninterrupted during those 800 years, just not at the level of pandemic. Those mutations would continue to be beneficial and those with them continued to be actively selected for survival.