Question

A group of penguins is standing on an iceberg. half the iceberg falls into the ocean and half of the penguins are killed leaving the remaining penguins to carry on the population. what is this is an example of?

Answer 1

Hello! Your answer is the bottleneck effect.

Speaking more broadly, genetic drift is when a population becomes smaller, and there are fewer genotypes in the gene pool. There are two types of genetic drift: the bottleneck effect and the founder effect.

The bottleneck effect is when an environmental change / human activity causes many members of the population to die, which means that the gene pool is now represented by just a few organisms. This is correct in this scenario, as an environmental change caused the gene pool to be reduced.

The founder effect is when a new colony is established elsewhere, so only alleles in the smaller founder group will be reproduced.

Hope this helps!