Population Bottleneck: A Genetic Analysis

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Population bottleneck is an evolutionary event in which a large part of a population or species is died or otherwise cannot reproduce, which increases genetic drift that can cause big losses of genetic variation for small populations. However, the amount of drift is inversely proportional to the population size, population bottleneck result a smaller population with reduced genetic diversity. Dropped genetic variation implies that the population will most likely be unable to adjust to new selection pressures, such as a shift in available resources (food, shelter, etc.) or climatic change, because the genetic variation that selection would act on may have already drifted out of the population. This genetic drift can affect the proportionate distribution of an allele and even cause to fixation or damage of alleles. Also, population bottleneck increases inbreeding and genetic homogeneity as there are some animals left in the gene pool which lead to unfavorable alleles can accumulate. Due to the smaller population size after a bottleneck event. population bottlenecks inform us that intraspecies diversity is similarly very vital …show more content…

The golden hamster underwent such as drastic bottleneck, most of the remaining individuals of the species can be genetically tracked back from a mother hamster and her single litter from the Syrian desert in the 1930. (Savino, 2015 ) However, most of the golden hamsters today are believed to be descended from this litter due to a sharp reduction in its size of a population. This species has experienced a continuous reduce of population size in the last twenty years, since changes in agricultural practices and disappearance of territories. Inbreeding programs also have played a major issue that dropped the populations of the species. However, some is known about the population genetic sequence of this species and how it is affected by terrestrial and geographical

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