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Right, you can understand them independently, but of course in reality they are intimately linked. For instance, isn't genetic drift just a consequence of muta
by bubblyworld 2y ago
Right, you can understand them independently, but of course in reality they are intimately linked.
For instance, isn't genetic drift just a consequence of mutation and natural selection? Neutral mutations with weak selection pressure will tend to build up in a population over time.
- LarsDu88 2y agoGenetic drift is not actually a consequence of mutation and natural selection. Hypothetically, if there was some sort of alien planet where the living inhabitants reproduced and used a replication system that doesn't undergo mutation and has no positive or negative natural selection, there would still be genetic drift and you would still observe changes in the allele frequencies of the population over time, and in small populations, genetic variation could slowly disappear...
- bubblyworld 2y agoAh, if I understand you correctly, you're actually saying that genetic drift is not _only_ a consequence of mutation/selection, right? Because of course allele frequencies change in a population just from meiosis. (I'm not sure your hypothetical is valid though - where would the variation in alleles have come from in the first place without mutation/selection?)
- LarsDu88 2y agoSince this is hypothetical... a wizard did it... You're right though. The initial allelic variation would have to come from mutation, a wizard doing genetic engineering, or some sort of weird alien mechanism that actively creates allelic variation.