Many organisms exerperience periodic drops in population numbers (bottlenecks). The consequences of these bottlenecks upon he evolutonary potential of the species (i.e., how they might repsond to novel selection pressures in a new environment) is largely unknown for all buth the simplest of circumstances. The proposed research will experimentally investigate the effects of bottlenicks upon the evolutionary potential by assessing response to artificial selection on composite traits in bottlenicked populations. The research will investigate specific hypotheses about how various components of genetic variance affect these composite traits and how these components respond to bottlenecks and contribute to the artificial selection response. The main thrust of the proposed research is to provide an empirical test of speciation theory via bottlenecks, but results will also affect management for endangered specites. The potential loss of adaptability as a results of population bottlenecks is a major concern in the management of captive and endangered species and we need to know the extent that species are in jeopardy of extinction as a result of small population size. the results of the research will contribute to ur understainding of how bottlencks affact genetic bariances within populations and thus can be used to guide management strategies for survival of endangered species.
