The phrase
"isolated populations" refers to groups of living things, such as plants or animals, that are separated from other groups of their species. They are usually located in specific areas where they do not interact or breed with individuals from other populations.
Full definition
A new optimization technique could help conservation biologists choose the most cost - effective ways of connecting
isolated populations of rare, threatened and endangered species living in protected areas.
The natural world was a continuum, he concluded,
with isolated populations perpetually in the process of becoming species in their own right.
It happens over generations as later generations stay in many ways quite similar but in certain respects become rather different from earlier generations, especially in small,
isolated populations facing novel selection pressures.
Another is population viability analysis, which uses computer models to project trends in a range of conditions
affecting isolated populations of a species and calculates the probability of long - time survival.
She works to
isolate populations of these cells, discover how the body regulates them, and understand how they can be used to treat disease.
Two asthma genes, identified in
isolated populations in Finland and Quebec, may provide clues to this boy's illness.
The state is one of the
most isolated population centers on earth, located 2,390 miles from the U.S. mainland and 3,850 from Japan.
These threats are particularly pertinent to humpback whales in the Arabian Sea, a
genetically isolated population numbering fewer than 100 animals and currently listed on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species as «Endangered.»
They suggested that radically new species somehow managed to develop rapidly
among isolated populations, conveniently leaving behind no fossils to docu - ment the process.
But now DNA found in bones plucked from the permafrost suggests there was a diverse array of immigrants that later broke up
into isolated populations.
At least for wolves, Wirsing said, prioritizing activities that connect landscapes and attempt to
rejoin isolated populations should be considered, he said.
The search for the gene began in Finland,
whose isolated population has often been studied for its elevated rate of rare genetic diseases.
«The take - away from our study is that postcopulatory sexual selection can quickly generate critical incompatibilities between ejaculates and female reproductive tracts that limit gene flow
between isolated populations or species,» Pitnick says.
Contraception can help
control isolated populations, but it costs a great deal, and deer are too short lived, mobile, and fertile to be affected for long.
The lynx's conservation strategy consists of
connecting isolated populations through ecological corridors, but the information provided through local and regional population viability models for short and longer time periods also helps.
The government's ground - based survey already hinted that the bears» habitat was fragmenting, with pandas living in 33
isolated populations compared to the previous count of 15.
«The little ecological information we have about blue macaws suggest there are three isolated populations [in Brazil],» Miyaki explains: one from Amazonia in the north, another from the grasslands of the northeast, and the last one from the Pantanal, a vast wetland that stretches across the central states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
«Our great concern is increased fragmentation of habitat so we are ending up with
very isolated populations of primates so they will become genetically less healthy,» says Tatyana Humle, a lecturer and researcher at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent and a co-author on the Current Biology paper.
Potential explanations have included rising levels of atmospheric oxygen because of photosynthesis, allowing for the development of more complex animals; the rise in carnivorous species and new predatory tactics, such as the flat and segmented, armor - crushing creatures known as anomalocaridids; and the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia, which may have created new ecological niches and
isolated populations as the continents drifted apart.
The recommendations became FUNAI policy, and a model for other countries
where isolated populations are emerging, such as neighboring Peru (see companion story).
To
monitor isolated populations over time, FUNAI researchers conduct regular flyovers, taking aerial photos of houses and fields, estimating populations, and noting hair styles and patterns of body paint.
For species such as the jaguar, which rarely crosses into territory disturbed by humans, survival may hinge on the creation of habitat corridors
linking isolated population pockets.
However, dog breeds generally are characterized by closed breeding and
relatively isolated populations, often with a small number of founders and popular sires whose gene pool is overrepresented in modern - day progeny.
This is reminiscent of canine cone - rod dystrophy 1 (cord1 - PRA, suspected RPGRIP1 mutation) in the miniature long - haired dachshund, where genotype - phenotype discordance has been demonstrated within a genetically
isolated population due to the presence of genetic disease modifiers [38].
Range The Townsend's big - eared bat occurs throughout the west and is distributed from the southern portion of British Columbia south along the Pacific coast to central Mexico and east into the Great Plains, with
isolated populations occurring in the central and eastern United States.
Habitat loss alone may be a good predictor of extinctions of threatened and endemic species in biodiversity hotspots, but this takes no account of pervasive synergistic effects of hunting, wildfires and other anthropogenic impacts on
isolated populations which may lead to much higher extinction rates compared to predictions from unqualified SAR models alone.
It is believed that this technique could explain why the many
seemingly isolated populations of estuarine crocodile have not split into divergent species.
Konstanz evolutionary biologists working with Prof. Axel Meyer have now described parallel evolution of two closely related, but
geographically isolated populations of cichlid fish in Nicaraguan crater lakes.
Horned Guan lives in
isolated populations in cloudforests on the highest mountain peaks and volcanoes in Guatemala and the neighboring Mexican state of Chiapas.
«Finding a new,
isolated population of large animals is sensational,» says zoologist Steven Perry of the University of Bonn.
Change can also occur due to accidental loss of alleles (genetic drift) in small
isolated populations.
So how do
you isolate a population of cow - sized reptiles?
«They may have derived from much older small - bodied ancestors, or adapted to evolutionary pressures occurring in small and
isolated populations,» says Will.
This explains how the Asian bush mosquito has not only spread inland but can also be found in
isolated populations.
This isolated population is not exploited by humans, so it offers a good baseline for conservationists to work out how many nautiluses can be safely caught.
The second was an Amazonian group from
an isolated population of indigenous Amerindians.