每日简报:君主是一种危物种
相关概念视频
There have been five major extinction events throughout geological history, resulting in the elimination of biodiversity, followed by a rebound of species that adapted to the new conditions. In the current geological epoch, the Holocene, there is a sixth extinction event in progress. This mass extinction has been attributed to human activities and is thus provisionally called the Anthropocene. In 2019 the human population reached 7.7 billion people and is projected to comprise 10 billion by...
Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...
When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.
Positive Frequency-Dependent Selection
In positive...
Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.
Conservation efforts often utilize scientific approaches to identify the reasons, or the agents, causing the population to decline. This approach then devises steps to remove, oppose, or neutralize the agents.
Conservation efforts may also introduce a test group to determine the probable cause of the decline. The...
Overview
A species is a group of organisms that interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Typically, individuals of the same species appear similar and share common characteristics due to their highly similar genomes. However, not all organisms that look alike are members of the same species. Various mechanisms keep most species discrete. While some mechanisms prevent reproductive behavior and fertilization (pre-zygotic isolation), others prevent the production of fertile offspring after...
Overview
Speciation usually occurs over a long evolutionary time scale, during which the species may be isolated or continue to interact. If two emerging species start to interbreed, reproductive barriers may be weak, and gene flow can occur again. At this point, the selection of hybrids across the two populations may either stabilize the newly mixed group into a single population or reinforce the distinction between them as new species. Speciation may occur gradually or rapidly, and in some...

