Sewall Wright & genetic drift

Notes on Sewall Wright: Genetic Drift:

Continuing my series of notes on the work of Sewall Wright, this one deals with the subject of genetic drift. I had originally planned to call this note 'Inbreeding and the decline of genetic variance', but anyone interested in the matters covered here, and searching for them on the internet, is far more likely to search for 'genetic drift'. This is one of the subjects most closely associated with Wright, to the extent that genetic drift was formerly often known as the 'Sewall Wright Effect'. My main aim is to help people follow Wright's own derivation of his key results, and to clarify the relationship between genetic drift and inbreeding.

Also, you might be interested in Will Provine's seminal work, Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. Provine synthesizes science, biography and history in such a manner so as to extract more than the sum of the parts.

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