What is founder effect ?

Five factors are known to affect Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. These are gene migration or gene flow, genetic drift, mutation, genetic recombination and natural selection. When migration of a section of population to another place and population occurs, gene frequencies change in the original as well as in the new population.

New genes/alleles are added to the new population and these are lost from the old population. There would be a gene flow if this gene migration, happens multiple times. If the same change occurs by chance, it is called genetic drift. Sometimes the change in allele frequency is so different in the new sample of population that they become a different species. The original drifted population becomes founders and the effect is called founder effect.