An ongoing goal in evolutionary genetics is to determine the contribution of genetic drift to phenotypic diversity. While there is little doubt that natural selection results in morphological adaptation, evidence for founder effects and population bottlenecks is based mainly on theoretical inference or laboratory simulation. In 2004, a hurricane wiped out the brown anole (Anolis sagrei) lizard population on several islands in the Bahamas. Jason Kolbe and colleagues seeded seven small islands with randomly selected founding pairs of A. sagrei from a nearby large island. They observed subsequent morphological adaptation and genetic variation at six microsatellite loci in the island populations from 2005 to 2009 and report the analysis in a recent paper (Science, published online 2 February 2012; doi:10.1126/science.1209566). Apparent adaption of the length of the hind limb to environmental factors, such as narrower perch and smaller area of vegetation, suggests substantial natural selection. Principle-coordinate analysis (PCoA) of microsatellite markers and ranking tests of hind-limb morphology suggest founder effects, which, surprisingly, persisted throughout the course of the study. This unusual field experiment illustrates the importance of considering founder effects in population genetics studies.