Population fragmentation
Population fragmentation is a form of population segregation.[1] It is often caused by habitat fragmentation.
Causes
Population fragmentation can be the cause of natural forces or human actions, although in modern times, human activity is the most common cause.[2] Some general causes of fragmentation are:
- the development of land around a protected area, even through the addition of a single road lane or fence line,
- the captivity, capture or killing of species in an area that links populations,
- the movement of a population away from other individuals of that species, such as the natural introduction of wolves and moose on Isle Royale,
- geologic processes, such as landslides or volcanoes, dividing a habitat
- rising sea levels separating islands from what was once a common landmass,
- global warming, especially when coupled with mountains, reducing movement from one habitat to another.[3]
Genetic effects
Population fragmentation may cause inbreeding depression, which leads to a decrease in genetic variability in the species involved.[4] This decreases the fitness of the population for several reasons. First, inbreeding forces competition with relatives, which decreases the evolutionary fitness of the species.[4] Secondly, the decrease in genetic variability causes an increased possibility a lethal homozygous recessive trait may be expressed; this decreases the average litter size reproduced, indirectly decreasing the population.[5] When a population is small, the influence of genetic drift increases, which leads to less and/or random fixation of alleles. In turn, this leads to increased homozygosity, negatively affecting individual fitness. The performance of plants may be compromised by less effective selection which causes an accumulation of deleterious mutations in small populations. Since individuals in small populations are more likely to be related, they are more likely to inbreed. A reduction in fitness may occur in small plant populations because of mutation accumulation, reduced genetic diversity, and increased inbreeding.[6] Over time, the evolutionary potential and ability of a species to adapt to a changing environment, such as climate change, is decreased.[7] In addition, the limited ability to adapt to changes due to inadequate gene flow can also increase a species susceptibility to extinction.[8]
Other instances of population fragmentation show that while population bottlenecks resulting from fragmentation should lower genetic diversity over time, as mentioned, some species that experience these changes are able to maintain high levels of genetic diversity.[9] Population fragmentation into multiple, smaller subpopulations, and with periods of low gene flow, is able to adequately preserve allelic richness, the number of alleles in a population, at the expense of heterozygosity - increases the Loss of heterozygosity.[9]
Population fragmentation by habitat fragmentation has been shown to increase the genetic differentiation between different subpopulations as there is less gene flow due to the physical separation.[10]
See also
References
- ^ Proctor, Michael F.; McLellan, Bruce N. & Strobeck, Curtis (2002), "Population Fragmentation of Grizzly Bears in Southeastern British Columbia, Canada", Ursus, 8: 153–160, JSTOR 3873196.
- ^ Disrupting evolutionary processes: The effect of habitat fragmentation on collared lizards in the Missouri Ozarks Alan R. Templeton, Robert J. Robertson, Jennifer Brisson, Jared Strasburg Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2001, 98 (10) 5426-5432; doi:10.1073/pnas.091093098
- ^ Hermes, Claudia; Keller, Klaus; Nicholas, Robert E.; Segelbacher, Gernot; Schaefer, H. Martin (2018-01-24). "Projected impacts of climate change on habitat availability for an endangered parakeet". PLOS ONE. 13 (1): e0191773. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1391773H. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0191773. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5783391. PMID 29364949.
- ^ a b Proctor, M. F.; McLellan, B. N.; Strobeck, C. & Barclay, R. M. R. (2005), "Genetic analysis reveals demographic fragmentation of grizzly bears yielding vulnerably small populations", Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272 (1579): 2409–2416, doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3246, PMC 1559960, PMID 16243699.
- ^ Krebs, C. J. (2009), Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance (6th ed.), San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, ISBN 978-0-321-50743-3.
- ^ Young, A., Boyle, T., & Brown, T. (1996). The population genetic consequences of habitat fragmentation for plants. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 11(10), 413-418. doi:10.1016/0169-5347(96)10045-8
- ^ Leimu, R., Vergeer, P., Angeloni, F., & Ouborg, N. J. 2010. Habitat fragmentation, climate change, and inbreeding in plants. The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology 1195:84-98.
- ^ Richard, Frankham,; D., Ballou, Jonathan; Katherine, Ralls,; Eldridge, Mark D. B.; R., Dudash, Michele; B., Fenster, Charles; C., Lacy, Robert; Paul, Sunnucks, (2019-10-23). "Population fragmentation causes inadequate gene flow and increases extinction risk". OUP Academic. doi:10.1093/o. Archived from the original on 2023-05-30.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Hill, Peta; Dickman, Chris R.; Dinnage, Russell; Duncan, Richard P.; Edwards, Scott V.; Greenville, Aaron; Sarre, Stephen D.; Stringer, Emily J.; Wardle, Glenda M.; Gruber, Bernd (2023-10-24). "Episodic population fragmentation and gene flow reveal a trade-off between heterozygosity and allelic richness". Molecular Ecology. 32 (24): 6766–6776. doi:10.1111/mec.17174. ISSN 1365-294X. PMID 37873908.
- ^ Alcaide, M.; Serrano, D.; Negro, J. J.; Tella, J. L.; Laaksonen, T.; Müller, C.; Gal, A.; Korpimäki, E. (2008-10-15). "Population fragmentation leads to isolation by distance but not genetic impoverishment in the philopatric Lesser Kestrel: a comparison with the widespread and sympatric Eurasian Kestrel". Heredity. 102 (2): 190–198. doi:10.1038/hdy.2008.107. ISSN 1365-2540.
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