Final answer:
The proportion of variation attributed to genes is called a)genetic heritability.
Step-by-step explanation:
The proportion of variation among individuals that can be attributed to genes is known as a)genetic heritability.
This concept refers to how much of the difference in a trait among a population is due to genetic differences as opposed to environmental factors. A trait's heritability may differ based on various populations and environments studied. When we consider a trait that has high heritability, this means that the genetic influence on the variation of this trait within the population is strong, suggesting a greater potential for evolutionary change driven by natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms acting on this genetic variance.
Population genetics is a field that examines these differences at the population level, including how allele frequencies in a population are subject to evolutionary processes. Notably, only those traits that are encoded genetically can be passed from parent to offspring and therefore be acted upon by natural selection. Thus, understanding heritability is critical for studies of evolution and for predicting how populations may adapt over time.