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Genetic Diversity: Mutations, Sexual Reproduction, Migration & Population Size

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Genetic Diversity: Mutations, Sexual Reproduction, Migration & Population Size

Genetic diversity is scientific term that is used to describe genetic differences. Genetic differences can be caused by a number of things. Mutations, Sexual reproduction, Migration and Population size all affect how diverse genetics can be.
Mutation causes many variations in any known species; they introduce new genetic information into a population by modifying the alleles that are already present or ones that have been absent. All different alleles of a trait came from some kind of mutation in the past. Most people when thinking of a mutation expect some obvious type of deformity or cancer; however mutations can be either neutral or harmful. Mutations can have no effect at all as with neutral ones, or stop the gene from functioning completely hence causing a harmful one.
Sexual reproduction creates new genetic combinations as each parent passes on 13 chromosomes to the child during fertilization. It’s the process of recombination of cells from both parents.
Migration of individuals is an important factor in passing on or subtracting alleles from one local population to another. Whenever one human being leaves one population and enters another, it subtracts its genetic information from its own and joins the one it has entered. As persons continue to add to and leave the population the gene pool will continue to change.
Population size is affected by all of the above. Simply put the smaller the population the less room there will be for genetic diversity, the bigger the population the more combinations of alleles will

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