Section 14.8 discusses how large populations should be in order to be viable in

Question

Section 14.8 discusses how large populations should be in order to be viable in the long- term. The suggestions for the effective sizes needed to retain evolutionary potential range from 500 to 5000. The senior author once received an email with the following statements: "As a working conservationist, I know that the dismal truth in the world is that the populations of nearly all keystone vertebrates have been rapidly declining, and are now in the hundreds or low thousands (census size, not effective size). Therefore, to advise that much larger numbers are needed to prevent extinction would cause much despair among these conservationists, and give new ammo to the nature-haters: "See, conservationists are ignoring the best science." This email suggests that geneticists should not recommend that the effective size of populations need to be in the thousands in order to prevent extinction because this goal would be difficult to reach for many species, and would, therefore, discourage conservation efforts. Do you agree or disagree with the sentiments of this email?

Explanation / Answer

When it comes to the question about conservation of any species, the evaluation of size of the population contribute the top priority for environmentalist. Smaller the population size higher the risk for extinction of the specie concern. Bigger the population size lower will be the extinction rate as maximum number of individual in species population will allow maximum mating of male and female and there will be production of new individuals having variation in genes helping them to fight against worst environmental condition and increase the chances of their survival” survival of fittest”.

The size of population of any species is influenced by demographic stochasticity, environmental variation, Natural disaster and genetic variability leads to the extinction of any population. So becomes important to calculate effective population size to be conserve to maintain the sustainability and prevent the loss of gene pool form the environment.

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