ABSTRACT
Interest in intraspecific genetic variation is primarily for three reasons: (1) the rate of evolutionary change is proportional to the available genetic diversity (Hamrick and Godt, 1996); (2) heterozygosity is positively related to fitness (Allendorf and Leary, 1986); and (3) the global gene pool represents all the information on the planet’s biological processes (Wilson, 1992). That is, loss of diversity is likely to decrease the ability of organisms to respond to environmental perturbation and discard anthropocentric biological information (Wilson, 1992).
