Question

What is an example of genetic diversity's influence on: a. short-term fitness and b. long-term evolutionary potential?

Answer 1

Genetic diversity is the ability of a population to adapt to changing environments.

A) Genetic diversity influence on short-term fitness can be identified by measuring the less heritability (such as, additive genetic variance divided by total phenotypic variance) of fitness-related traits of fitness itself. With this information, one can predict the evolutionary response of a trait to a given intensity of selection.

B) Genetic diversity influence on long-term evolutionary potential can be considered by assessing the "evolvability" of the trait (such as coefficient of variation of additive genetic variance) . In some cases features that are strongly correlated under strong selection may have less variation for future evolutionary challenges.