Genetic Bottleneck & Founder Effect

Population genetics is not just about which allele wins — it is also about how many alleles survive at all. This simulator runs a real Wright-Fisher model of a single-locus population: each generation is resampled with replacement from the previous one's allele pool, exactly the process that drives genetic drift in any finite population. Crash the population to a small set of founders with one click and watch allelic diversity and expected heterozygosity collapse — then watch the population regrow toward its carrying capacity while diversity stays low, because regrowth restores numbers but not the alleles chance already erased. It is the same mechanism behind low genetic diversity in cheetahs, northern elephant seals and human founder populations.