ReviewEvolutionary applications2016
Are heritability and selection related to population size in nature? Meta-analysis and conservation implications.
Review in Evolutionary applications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Genomic structural variation rescues a classic biological invader from a population bottleneck.Science advances · 2026Article
- Nucleotide diversity is a poor predictor of short-term adaptive potential.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Assessing the Evolutionary Potential of Endangered Populations Using Genomic Analyses of Selection in Ecologically Important Gene Regions.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- The Potential Role of Haploblocks in the Persistence of Small, Isolated Populations of Brook Trout (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviors: a meta-analysis.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Local Adaptation Is Highest in Populations With Stable Long-Term Growth.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Heritability of body size matches trait evolution in the range expansion of a biological control agent.Current research in insect science · 2025Article
- The potential for evolutionary rescue in an Arctic seashore plant threatened by climate change.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- When and how can we predict adaptive responses to climate change?Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Reproductive biology ofCurrent zoology · 2023Article
- Temperature alters the toxicological impacts of plant terpenoids on the polyphagous model herbivore Vanessa cardui.Journal of chemical ecology · 2023Article
- How density dependence, genetic erosion and the extinction vortex impact evolutionary rescue.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Heat-induced female biased sex ratio during development is not mitigated after prolonged thermal selection.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Low interspecific variation and no phylogenetic signal in additive genetic variance in wild bird and mammal populations.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Publication bias impacts on effect size, statistical power, and magnitude (Type M) and sign (Type S) errors in ecology and evolutionary biology.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Heritability Estimation Approaches Utilizing Genome-Wide Data.Current protocols · 2023Review
- Rapid eco-phenotypic feedback and the temperature response of biomass dynamics.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Molecular and quantitative genetic variation within and between populations of the declining grassland speciesEcology and evolution · 2022Article
- Susceptibility to a sexually transmitted disease in a wild koala population shows heritable genetic variance but no inbreeding depression.Molecular ecology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is widely thought that small populations should have less additive genetic variance and respond less efficiently to natural selection than large populations. Across taxa, we meta-analytically quantified the relationship between adult census population size (N) and additive genetic variance (proxy: h (2)) and found no reduction in h (2) with decreasing N; surveyed populations ranged from four to one million individuals (1735 h (2) estimates, 146 populations, 83 species). In terms of adaptation, ecological conditions may systematically differ between populations of varying N; the magnitude of selection these populations experience may therefore also differ. We thus also meta-analytically tested whether selection changes with N and found little evidence for systematic differences in the strength, direction or form of selection with N across different trait types and taxa (7344 selection estimates, 172 populations, 80 species). Collectively, our results (i) indirectly suggest that genetic drift neither overwhelms selection more in small than in large natural populations, nor weakens adaptive potential/h (2) in small populations, and (ii) imply that natural populations of varying sizes experience a variety of environmental conditions, without consistently differing habitat quality at small N. However, we caution that the data are currently insufficient to determine whether some small populations may retain adaptive potential definitively. Further study is required into (i) selection and genetic variation in completely isolated populations of known N, under-represented taxonomic groups, and nongeneralist species, (ii) adaptive potential using multidimensional approaches and (iii) the nature of selective pressures for specific traits.
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