Genetic Rescue Simulator (2D)

Small, isolated wildlife populations lose genetic diversity every generation purely through chance — a process called genetic drift. As heterozygosity falls and the inbreeding coefficient rises, previously hidden harmful recessive alleles are exposed, dragging down survival and reproduction in a feedback loop that can push a population toward extinction. This simulator renders such a population as a rotatable 2D cluster of individuals, color-coded from red (inbred) to green (genetically diverse), evolving generation by generation under Wright's heterozygosity-decay and inbreeding-depression equations, alongside a live multi-line history graph of heterozygosity, inbreeding coefficient, fitness and population size. Tune the effective population size, inbreeding load, and carrying capacity, then trigger a genetic rescue event — introducing unrelated immigrants, exactly as wildlife managers did for the Florida panther — and watch heterozygosity, fitness, and population growth recover in real time.