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Populations suffer two types of stochasticity: demographic stochasticity, from sampling error in offspring number, and environmental stochasticity, from temporal variation in the growth rate. By modelling evolution through phenotypic selection following an abrupt environmental change, we investigate how genetic and demographic dynamics, as well as effects on population survival of the genetic variance and of the strength of stabilizing selection, differ under the two types of stochasticity. We show that population survival probability declines sharply with stronger stabilizing selection under demographic stochasticity, but declines more continuously when environmental stochasticity is strengthened. However, the genetic variance that confers the highest population survival probability differs little under demographic and environmental stochasticity. Since the influence of demographic stochasticity is stronger when population size is smaller, a slow initial decline of genetic variance, which allows quicker evolution, is important for population persistence. In contrast, the influence of environmental stochasticity is population‐size‐independent, so higher initial fitness becomes important for survival under strong environmental stochasticity. The two types of stochasticity interact in a more than multiplicative way in reducing the population survival probability. Our work suggests the importance of explicitly distinguishing and measuring the forms of stochasticity during evolutionary rescue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the estimation of uncertainty in evolutionary parameters using a recently devised approach for resampling entire additive genetic variance-covariance matrices ( G). Large-sample theory shows that maximum-likelihood estimates (including restricted maximum likelihood, REML) asymptotically have a multivariate normal distribution, with covariance matrix derived from the inverse of the information matrix, and mean equal to the estimated G. This suggests that sampling estimates of G from this distribution can be used to assess the variability of estimates of G, and of functions of G. We refer to this as the REML- MVN method. This has been implemented in the mixed-model program WOMBAT. Estimates of sampling variances from REML- MVN were compared to those from the parametric bootstrap and from a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo ( MCMC) approach (implemented in the R package MCMCglmm). We apply each approach to evolvability statistics previously estimated for a large, 20-dimensional data set for Drosophila wings. REML- MVN and MCMC sampling variances are close to those estimated with the parametric bootstrap. Both slightly underestimate the error in the best-estimated aspects of the G matrix. REML analysis supports the previous conclusion that the G matrix for this population is full rank. REML- MVN is computationally very efficient, making it an attractive alternative to both data resampling and MCMC approaches to assessing confidence in parameters of evolutionary interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]