Founder Effect/Bottle Neck Effect and Chromosomal reversal?

[jebus197]

Hi once diversity has been lost due to a founder effect, or a bottle neck effect, can it ever be restored? That is to say that for example the can the loss of chromosomal diversity in founder/bottle neck populations ever somehow be restored, or does it remain relatively constant throughout a species history? What about when new species branch off within a closely related clade that originated from one of these populations? What other kinds of events might lead to a loss of genetic diversity and how does this effect a species ability to evolve?

[JackBean]

Of course it is not constant. Genetic diversity is restored, although highly probably not the same. Probably new mutations would arose and some equilibrium achieved.

[jebus197]

I think I can half guess why. Because a variety of different factors, environmental change, mutation, sexual selection and so on will act over time to restore diversity. Does this sound about right?

But what I was interested in was if a founder effect, or a bottle neck effect can ever leave any kind of lasting 'trace' in the genetic history of a species, so that for example you might be able to say that there was a significant founder/bottleneck effect at some point in the evolutionary history of a species at some point in the past?

Or in other words, do such events leave any kind of 'fingerprint', or is such information lost as diversity is restored over time?

[canalon]

Yes they often do.
Some of the most common examples are listed in the wikipedia article on bottlenecks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

[JackBean]

I think I can half guess why. Because a variety of different factors, environmental change, mutation, sexual selection and so on will act over time to restore diversity. Does this sound about right?

Partly, but partly because the mutations are random, thus the probability that exactly the same mutations will arise is small.

[jebus197]

Anybody?