Question

How are the effects of genetic drift similar to the effects of having a small sample size in a scientific experiment?

Answer 1

The effects of genetic drift are similar to a small sample size in that they can exhibit a very large variance compared to a larger sample or a larger gene pool. With a small population, genetic drift can be more extreme than it would be in a larger population.

Answer 2

Genetic drift refers to the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant in a population due to random sampling of organisms. In this case, a small sample size in an experiment can skew the results, because ordinary data will not be averaged out.This effect is the same with genetic drift, such that genetic drift can have a small populations by chance, certain alleles may increase or decrease in frequency because of the small population size.