Which process is not influenced by genetic drift?

Natural selection is the process that directly influences the evolution of populations by favoring traits that confer some advantage to individuals in a particular environment. While genetic drift is a mechanism of evolution that involves random changes in allele frequencies, especially in small populations, it operates independently of the selective pressures that favor specific traits.

In contrast, genetic drift can lead to changes in allele frequency due to random sampling effects, potentially resulting in gene fixation—where an allele becomes the only variant in a population—and gene divergence, where two populations evolve different allele frequencies over time primarily due to chance events. Both of these processes are results of genetic drift.

Thus, the influence of natural selection on the adaptation of traits makes it distinct from processes driven by genetic drift, reinforcing that it is the only process in this context not influenced by genetic drift.