|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
It follows naturally from the widely accepted Darwinian dictum that
failures of populations or of species to adapt and to evolve under
changing environments will result in their extinction. Population
geneti cists have proclaimed a centerstage role in developing
conservation biology theory and applications. However, we must
critically reexamine what we know and how we can make rational
contributions. We ask: Is genetic variation really important for
the persistence of species? Has any species become extinct because
it ran out of genetic variation or because of inbreeding
depression? Are demographic and environmental stochas ticity by far
more important for the fate of a population or species than genetic
stochasticity (genetic drift and inbreeding)? Is there more to
genetics than being a tool for assessing reproductive units and
migration rates? Does conventional wisdom on inbreeding and "magic
numbers" or rules of thumb on critical effective population sizes
(MVP estimators) reflect any useful guidelines in conservation
biology? What messages or guidelines from genetics can we reliably
provide to those that work with conservation in practice? Is
empirical work on numerous threatened habitats and taxa gathering
population genetic information that we can use to test these
guidelines? These and other questions were raised in the invitation
to a symposium on conservation genetics held in May 1993 in
pleasant surroundings at an old manor house in southern Jutland,
Denmark."
This volume contains the papers presented at a symposium on popula
tion biology sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It
was . held at the guest house of the University of Ttibingen at
Oberjoch on May 15-19, 1983. Prior to this conference a small group
of European biologists had met in Berlin (June 1981) and Pavia
(September 1982) to discuss re search problems on the borderline
between population genetics and evolutionary ecology. From the
contributions and discussions at these meetings it became evident
that the unification of approaches to evolutionary problems in
population genetics and evolutionary ecology has not yet been suc
cessful and requires further efforts. It was the consensus that a
larger symposium with international participation would be helpful
to con front and discuss the different approaches to population
biology in order to assess "where we are now" and "where we should
be going. " As a result an organizational committee was formed (F.
Christiansen, S. Jayakar, V. Loeschcke, W. Scharloo, and K.
W6hrmann) to iden tify topics that seemed, at least to them, to be
fruitful in tackling problems in population biology. Consequently,
a number of colleagues were asked to participate in the meeting. We
have divided this book into chapters corresponding to the eight
topics chosen. The volume begins with the relation between genotype
and phenotype and is followed by a chapter on quantitative genetics
and selection in natural populations."
|
You may like...
Rio 2
Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, …
Blu-ray disc
(1)
R76
R42
Discovery Miles 420
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.