What is genetic diversity?
Genetic diversity is a measure of the possible choices of information provided by a gene. For example, a particular gene may determine the flower color of a plant. Different choices (alleles) may exist for that gene (i.e. a pink allele, a purple allele, a white allele). In each case, the same gene determines flower color, but the exact DNA sequence of the alleles of that gene are different. When all or nearly all the members of a population have the same allele at a gene, that population is said to have low genetic diversity at that gene. If many varients exist for a gene sequence, that population has high genetic diversity at that gene.
