Reduced genetic variation and the emergence of an extinction-threatening disease in the Tasmanian devil

Genetic change will not occur in populations if all the assumptions of the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are met (see Section 5.1). In this and the next several chapters, we will see what happens when the assumptions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are violated. In this chapter, we will examine what happens when we violate the assumption of infinite population size: that is, what will be the effect on allele and genotype frequencies when population size (N) is finite?