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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Acrocephalus" data-source="post: 1949980" data-attributes="member: 54391">Thanks Niels for your clarifications. You are right that genetic drift and founder effect are two different things, but I think that in the case of the House Sparrow (and similar examples) the founder effect is the cause of the genetic drift in the following generations. A few House Sparrows founded the Helgoland population, so their genetic structure (allele frequency..) is transmitted to the following generations. With time, the founded population can be more like the founding individuals than the source population. So, a founder effect can cause genetic drift. Of course, genetic drift can be caused by reduction of population size in situ following for example a catastrophic event.It should be noted that the authors of the article provided also an alternative explanation.</blockquote>