Inbreeding Depression

Inbreeding depression is a very strong danger to small populations. As relatives with
similar DNA interbreed, more and more deleterious mutations begin to be expressed,
effectively crippling the population, and often driving it to extinction. However, small
populations are often unable to avoid inbreeding, meaning other mechanisms must be
employed to counter its destructive effect.

Maintenance of Deleterious Alleles

Deleterious alleles are, by definition, not beneficial and should be selected out. However, sometimes deleterious alleles are maintained in a population, despite their harmful effects. Scientists have proposed several explanations for this unintuitive quirk of biology. Overdominance, otherwise known as heterozygote advantage, and mutation-selection balance are two such explanations.