Genetic hitchhiking

Genetic hitchhiking, also called genetic draft or the hitchhiking effect, is when an allele changes frequency not because it itself is under natural selection, but because it is near another gene on the same chromosome that is undergoing a selective sweep. When one gene goes through a selective sweep, any other nearby polymorphisms that are in linkage disequilibrium will tend to change their allele frequencies too. Selective sweeps happen when newly appeared and hence rare mutations are advantageous, and increase in frequency. Neutral or even slightly deleterious alleles that happen to be close by on the chromosome 'hitchhike' along with the sweep. In contrast, effects on a neutral locus due to linkage disequilibrium with newly appeared deleterious mutations are called background selection. Both genetic hitchhiking and background selection are stochastic (random) evolutionary forces, like genetic drift.