panmixia

1 9.9

All members of a group can freely mate with any other member

noun
/pænˈmɪk.si.ə/

Specialized

: panmixia

When examining mating patterns, the biologist noted that the high level of panmixia resulted in minimal genetic differentiation.

Examples

In a population characterized by panmixia, every member has an equal chance of mating with any other member.
We found it interesting that trees generated using the 2S2L sampling strategy treatment were relatively similar to each other and to the ASTRAL and concatenation trees, given that this treatment grossly and intentionally violates the panmixia assumption of the MSC.

Academic text (2018)
Despite the lack of upstream genetic flow between these fragmented populations, the size of the resulting populations in each respective fragment was apparently large enough to maintain panmixia and delay or avoid the expected effects of random losses in the genetic profile.

Academic text (2018)
The research revealed that panmixia among the organisms led to greater genetic diversity within the population.

Surface Forms

panmixia singular

panmixias plural

Morphology

panmixia = mix (semi-transparent) = pan + mix + ia

The prefix 'pan-' and root 'mix' are clear, but the specialized biological meaning may not be obvious.

Etymology

Panmixia comes from Greek parts pan- 'all' and mixis 'mix', and you can see the same idea in the English word mix. So, panmixia means a group where everyone 'mixes' freely and any two individuals are equally likely to mate.