The evolution of metapopulations

Natural populations differ from the simplest models in ways which can significantly affect their evolution. Real populations are rarely all of the same size; the rates of migration into and out of populations vary in space and time; some populations go extinct, and new ones are established, while all populations fluctuate in size. Furthermore, the genetic properties of real species are not like those assumed in simple models. Alleles are exposed to a wide variety of selection mutation rarely creates novel genotypes with each mutation event, generations overlap, and environments vary from place to place. Evolution in a metapopulation can be substantially different from the predictions of single-population models and, indeed, very different from the simplest models of subdivided species.