Sea otters have low genetic diversity, which could endanger their health as a species, a UCLA-led team of life scientists has discovered. The findings have implications for the conservation of rare and endangered species, ...
Ecology
Jun 18, 2019
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93
Conservation decisions based on population counts may fail to protect large, slow-breeding animals from irrevocable decline, according to new research coinciding with Endangered Species Day.
Ecology
May 17, 2019
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451
Stable ecosystems occasionally experience events that cause widespread death—for example, bacteria in the human gut may be wiped out by antibiotics, or ocean life may be depleted by overfishing. A new study from MIT physicists ...
Ecology
May 14, 2019
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47
In Avengers: Endgame, the highly-anticipated 22nd film in the Marvel franchise, Earth's mightiest heroes contend with the repercussions of supervillain Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe with the snap of his ...
Environment
May 06, 2019
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4
Duckweeds are a treat for many aquatic animals like ducks and snails, but for pond owners, they're sometimes a thorn in the side. The tiny and fast-growing plants are of great interest to researchers, not at least because ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 27, 2019
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3
Human appetites are pushing makos and other iconic sharks to the brink of extinction, scientists warned in a new assessment of the apex predator's conservation status.
Ecology
Mar 22, 2019
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7458
A new study reveals that young hen harriers in England suffer abnormally high mortality compared to populations in Orkney and mainland Scotland and provides compelling evidence that the most likely cause is illegal killing ...
Ecology
Mar 20, 2019
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28
Species often experience a genetic bottleneck that diminishes genetic variation after speciation or introduction into a new area. Though bottlenecks in population size always reduce fitness and evolutionary potential, introduced ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 19, 2019
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75
Compared to other animals, chimpanzees show tremendous variation across groups in their behavior—from the types of tools they use in their feeding behavior to the specific gestures they use in communication. Research in ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 07, 2019
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93
In the animal kingdom, birds band together to ward off predators, and honeybees work collectively to benefit the entire hive. Animals of the human persuasion can act cooperatively too, at times, though this behavior is not ...
General Physics
Mar 04, 2019
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36
In population genetics and population ecology, population size (usually denoted N) is the number of individual organisms in a population.
The effective population size (Ne) is defined as "the number of breeding individuals in an idealized population that would show the same amount of dispersion of allele frequencies under random genetic drift or the same amount of inbreeding as the population under consideration." Ne is usually less than N (the absolute population size) and this has important applications in conservation genetics.
Small population size results in increased genetic drift. Population bottlenecks are when population size reduces for a short period of time.
Overpopulation may indicate any case in which the population of any species of animal may exceed the carrying capacity of its ecological niche.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
