Founder Effect Makes New Population Different from Original
Founder effect is the result of starting a new population with a low number of individuals (founders), so that their gene pool may not contain the same proportions of alleles for a particular locus as in the original population. Founder effect is the genetic difference between the original population and an isolated offshoot population. This difference is due to alleles in the founder members of the new population being unrepresentative of the alleles in the original population as a whole. Founder effect occurs when isolated colonies are founded by small number of organisms. A small set of founders break off from a main population by a chance event. The new population made by founder members differs genetically from the original general population.