Population genetics

Population genetics is the study of the distribution of and change in allele frequencies under the influence of the five evolutionary forces: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, migration and nonrandom mating. It also takes account of population subdivision and population structure in space. As such, it attempts to explain such phenomena as adaptation and speciation. Population genetics was a vital ingredient in the modern evolutionary synthesis, its primary founders were Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane and Ronald Fisher, who also laid the foundations for the related discipline of quantitative genetics.

See also

• Ecological genetics
• Fitness landscape
• Founder effect
• Genotype-phenotype distinction
• Hardy-Weinberg principle
• Microevolution
• Molecular evolution
• Muller's ratchet
• Mutational meltdown
• Population bottleneck
• Selection
• Small population size
• Ewens's sampling formula