Local extinction, also extirpation, is the termination of a species (or other taxon) in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinctions.
Local extinctions mark a change in the ecology of an area. It has sometimes been followed by a replacement of the species taken from other locations, such as with wolf reintroduction.
BiogeographyMetapopulationPatch dynamics and Habitat fragmentation
Glaciation is one factor that leads to local extinction. This was the case during the Pleistocene glaciation event in North America. During this period, most of the native North American species of earthworm were killed in places covered by glaciation. This left them open for colonization by European earthworms brought over in soil from Europe.
Species naturally become extirpated from islands over time. The number of species an island can support is limited by its geographical size. Because many islands were relatively recently formed due to climate change at the end of the Pleistocene when the sea level rose, and these islands most likely had the same complement of species as found on the mainland, counting the species which still survive at present on a statistically large enough amount of islands will give the parameters with which certain groups of species such as plants or birds will become less biodiverse on a given island over a given period of time, depending on its size. The same calculations can also be applied to determine when species will disappear from nature parks ('islands' in many senses), mountain tops and mesas (see sky islands), forest remnants or other such distributional patches. This research also demonstrates that certain species are more prone to extinction than others, a species has an intrinsic extinction-ability (incidence function).
Some species exploit or require transient or disturbed habitats, such as vernal pools, a human gut, or burnt woodland after forest fires, and are characterised by highly fluctuating population numbers and shifting distributional patterns.
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An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and invasive species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List lists the global conservation status of many species, and various other agencies assess the status of species within particular areas.
In biology, a species (: species) is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity.
We present novel analytical results concerning ecosystem species diversity that stem from a proposed coarse-grained neutral model based on birth-death processes. The relevance of the problem lies in the urgency for understanding and synthesizing both theor ...
Iop Publishing Ltd2012
To optimally manage a metapopulation, managers and conservation biologists can favor a type of habitat spatial distribution (e.g. aggregated or random). However, the spatial distribution that provides the highest habitat occupancy remains ambiguous and num ...
Elsevier2012
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Proliferative kidney disease (PKD) is a high-mortality pathology that critically affects freshwater salmonid populations. Infection is caused by the endoparasitic myxozoan Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonae, which exploits freshwater bryozoans as primary hosts. ...