{"id":7993,"date":"2019-05-22T16:02:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/founder_effect_-or_principle\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:02:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:02:52","slug":"founder_effect_-or_principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/founder_effect_-or_principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Founder effect (or principle)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A concept originally proposed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.genetics.org\/content\/167\/3\/1041.full\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.genetics.org\/content\/167\/3\/1041.full&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ernst Mayr<\/a>&nbsp;(1904-2005) in 1942 in his discontinuous theory of genetic revolution by allopatric speciation to account for rapid biological evolution in a way that the phyletic gradualism of the Modern synthesis could not. &nbsp;The starting point is that a few individuals within a gene pool (i.e., the founders) become geographically isolated (and it could be even just one pregnant female). &nbsp;These isolated and marginal individuals subsequently evolve a gene pool via genetic drift that is sufficiently distinct from the original one to prevent interbreeding between pools, with behavior forming an important isolating mechanism in this respect. &nbsp;In this way, a new species might evolve. &nbsp;The effect, while demonstrated in laboratory studies of <span class=\"\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Drosophila flies<\/span>, has been subjected to a number of criticisms (e.g., it is a relatively infrequent event in biological evolution).&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"biological_evolution\">Biological evolution<\/a>, <a href=\"cultural_evolution\">Cultural evolution<\/a>, <a href=\"genetic_drift_-or_random_walk-\">Genetic drift (or random walk)<\/a>, <a href=\"lineage\">Lineage<\/a>, <a href=\"modern_synthesis\">Modern synthesis<\/a>, <a href=\"phyletic_gradualism_and_punctuated_equilibrium\">Phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium<\/a>, <a href=\"speciation\">Speciation<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A concept originally proposed by Ernst Mayr&nbsp;(1904-2005) in 1942 in his discontinuous theory of genetic revolution by allopatric speciation to account for rapid biological evolution in a way that the phyletic gradualism of the Modern synthesis could not. &nbsp;The starting point is that a few individuals within a gene pool (i.e., the founders) become geographically &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/founder_effect_-or_principle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Founder effect (or principle)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-7993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}