Hitchhiker effect

Topic

The hitchhiker effect, also known as genetic hitchhiking or genetic draft, is an evolutionary biology process where an allele changes in frequency not because it is directly selected for, but because it is physically linked to another gene undergoing a selective sweep on the same DNA chain. This linkage disequilibrium causes nearby neutral or even slightly deleterious polymorphisms to ride along with the favored gene, altering their prevalence in the population.