One who founds, establishes, and erects; one who lays a foundation; an author; one from whom anything originates; one who endows.

Of a set of uniparental replicators, their most recent common ancestor. The oldest letter of a descent group. Of a feature, the first letter that bore this feature. Of a clone group, any member that is not a clone.

An individual from whom at least some present-day members of a population descend and for whom no ancestral information is available. An “effective founder” is one whose ancestors are only represented through that individual.

a starting population among which there is no known genetic relationships. aside from mutation, no closed population can ever have more genetic variation than the founder stock

an individual drawn from a source population who contributes genetically to the derived subpopulation.