Bottleneck effect?

[Casey]

I searched in the forum and couldn't find a clear definition, anyone familiar with this term?

[canalon]

I assume you are talking about population genetics. It means that when population is greatly reduced (whatever the reason) some mutations/alleles that were not necessarily favorable/frequent in the original population might come to represent a significant amount of the population because it survived better (by chance or not) during the population reduction. It is very similar to the "founder effect", but with a wider application (founders are just a particular case)

[Casey]

So if I were to have 10 rabbits, and 7 of them didn't have as greater hearing as the other 3, the other 7 could get killed from being preyed on. The remaining 3 would be the bottleneck population?

[wbla3335]

Yes. The remaining genetic variation present in the 3 survivors is less than the genetic variation that was present in the population of the original 10. Picture a bottle. The thick part represents the amount of original variation. The thin neck represents the reduced variation in the survivors. This is why it's called a bottleneck.

[Casey]

Wicked thanks heaps! Yeah I asked my mum if she knew what it ment and as a guess she said the same example about the bottle. Great minds think alike aye. Thanks again!