If the snow leopard becomes extinct by the year 2018, what will most likely happen to the prey populations in the areas in which it lived?

The predators are those animals or organism that feed on other animals(prey) for the fulfillment of their energy.

The predators helps to maintain the population of herbivores in a controlled manner.

The predator species when eliminated from a particular region, increases the population of the prey. They increase faster and their population keeps on growing.

After sometime the competition for food will increase and it will show negative impact on the population of prey and ultimately its population will decrease.

genetic variation can be caused by mutation (which can create entirely new alleles in a population), random mating, random fertilization, and recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis (which reshuffles alleles within an organism's offspring).