Each organism carries a heritable trait value (e.g. thermal tolerance) drawn from the population's genetic variance. A sudden environmental shock imposes a new survival threshold — only individuals whose trait falls within tolerance survive, so a genetically diverse population is far more likely to contain survivors than a genetically uniform one:
trait_i ~ N(0.5, diversity²)
shock: survives_i = |trait_i − shock_target| < tolerance
next_gen: trait_child = trait_parent + N(0, mutation²)
- Genetic diversity — standard deviation of the trait distribution across the population (color spread on the field).
- Growth rate — how fast surviving organisms reproduce between disturbances.
- Mutation rate — how much offspring traits drift from their parents, replenishing diversity over time.
- Trigger Disturbance — applies a random environmental shock (e.g. a heatwave) that only organisms with a matching trait survive.
This models a core finding in ecological genetics: populations with higher standing genetic diversity are more resilient to environmental change because some individuals are likely to already be pre-adapted, a principle used in conservation genetics to justify protecting genetic (not just species) diversity.