Question

What does the term Gene pool mean?

Answer 1

The variety of alleles present in a population

Explanation:

A gene pool within a population is the variety of alleles (different forms of a gene) that are present. If you have a small gene pool, then the offspring produced will have little genetic variation.

For example, population 1 has a gene pool of A, B, C, D, E, F, G (it has 7 alleles / different forms of the gene) ; whilst population 2 has a gene pool of A, B, C. You can see that population 1 has a larger gene pool / more variety, so more combinations can arise when you're producing an offspring.