Table 1.

Roles of intraspecific variation in ecological and evolutionary processes with representative open access articles

Levels	Processes	Summary	Examples of open access articles
Population	Portfolio effects	Genetic variation (and biodiversity) reduces risks and buffers negative impacts of changing environments. Individuals with various genotypes may produce a wide range of responses to the environment, thus contributing to population stability	Schindler et al. (2015) reviewed existing papers to illustrate the importance of diversity, both inter‐ and intraspecific variations for population persistence and evolutionary potentials
	Connectivity, effective population size, and mating success	Genetic variation increases effective population size and reduces risks of inbreeding depression, thus ensuring offspring survival	Hoffman et al. (2014) suggested that higher neutral genetic variation reduces the impact of inbreeding depression and the negative impact on population health
	Adaptability/evolvability	Genetic variation provides genotypes for new selections in a changing environment and contributes to populations fitting into the new environment	Merilä and Hendry (2014) reviewed evolutionary responses to climate changes. Additional examples of environmental changes are listed in the text
Community and ecosystems	Species diversityAbundancePrimary productivityPlant–soil interaction	Increasing genetic and phenotypic variations within species typically increases its primary productivity, species diversity, and abundance of mutualistic and antagonistic species (e.g., herbivores), and influences in plant–soil interactions	Crutsinger (2016) reviewed a number of examples illustrating how genetic variation influences the diversity and abundance of surrounding species, productivity, and plant–soil interactions
	Stability of ecosystem processes	Due to the above effects, genetic variation contributes to the stability of ecological processes and functions	Genung et al. (2010) found that the genetic variation of flowering species increases the floral abundance and number of visiting pollinators, thus ensuring the reproduction of the species and a sustainable food supply for pollinators