Define Variation.

Hint: There are a lot of differences between the individuals within a species and this type of difference can be found by the inherited or environmental factors. This is called variation.

Complete Answer:
Variation is always the difference between an ideal and an actual situation. Variation is most often encountered as a change in data, expected outcomes, or slight changes in production quality.
Between the individuals of the same species, there can be seen differences between the characteristics which is known as the Variation. During the reproduction, there are some variations that passed on from parents to offspring, via genes. This type of variation is called inherited variation. In between the variations, some variation is the result of differences in the surroundings, or what an individual does.

Among the different genera, the variation is known as an intraspecific variation which has two types of somatic variation and germinal variation.

- Advantages: The advantage of having variation within a population is that some individuals will be better adapted to their environment than others. Those individuals who are not well adapted to their environment are less likely to survive and reproduce.
- Disadvantages: Organisms may get a new feature that decreases fitness. Remember that not all variation is good variation and genetic variation is virtually unnoticeable.

Note: In biology, variation is any difference between cells, individual organisms, or groups of organisms of any species which is caused either by genetic differences (genotypic variation) or on the expression of the genetic potentials by the effect of environmental factors (phenotypic variation).