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Hard questions about animal conservation science, ecology and biodiversity!
1. What is "assisted gene flow" and why is it considered for climate adaptation?
💡 Assisted gene flow deliberately moves genotypes from warm-adapted populations to cooler populations before climate change arrives — potentially allowing genetic adaptation faster than natural migration, controversial but increasingly considered.
2. What is the "EDGE of Existence" program and what does EDGE stand for?
💡 EDGE (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered) prioritizes conservation of species representing unique evolutionary lineages — the axolotl, Yangtze finless porpoise, and bumblebee bat score high on EDGE metrics.
3. What is "defaunation" and how does it differ from deforestation?
💡 Defaunation (Dirzo et al., Science 2014) describes the global collapse of animal populations — loss of large animals disrupts seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and vegetation structure even in intact-looking forests.
4. What is the "tragedy of the commons" in wildlife conservation?
💡 Hardin's tragedy of the commons (1968) explains why shared resources (fisheries, commons) are overexploited — each individual rationally maximizes personal gain while costs are shared, leading to collective collapse despite individual irrationality.
5. What is "environmental DNA" (eDNA) monitoring and how is it used?
💡 eDNA monitoring detects species from DNA shed into water (skin cells, feces, mucus) — allowing detection of rare, cryptic, or invasive species without direct observation, revolutionizing biodiversity monitoring.
6. What is "species distribution modeling" (SDM) in conservation biology?
💡 SDMs (MaxEnt and others) correlate known species locations with environmental variables to predict suitable habitat — used to identify climate refugia, plan corridors, and predict range shifts under climate change scenarios.
7. What is "genetic rescue" in conservation?
💡 Genetic rescue introduces new genetic material into small, inbred populations — Florida panther genetic rescue from Texas pumas (1995) dramatically improved survival, immune function, and reproductive success.
8. What is "conservation paleobiology" and how does it inform modern conservation?
💡 Conservation paleobiology uses the fossil record to establish pre-human baselines — revealing historical species abundances, geographic ranges, and ecosystem functions that current conservation targets can be calibrated against.
9. What is "rewilding" and what are its three cores?
💡 Rewilding (Soule & Noss, 1998) rests on three cores: core wilderness areas, wildlife corridors connecting them, and carnivore reintroduction to restore trophic cascades — allowing ecosystems to self-regulate.
10. What is "metapopulation dynamics" in conservation ecology?
💡 Metapopulation theory (Levins, 1969) shows networks of subpopulations connected by dispersal — local extinctions are recolonized from nearby populations, making the metapopulation more resilient than isolated fragments.
11. What is "trophic rewilding" and why is it controversial?
💡 Trophic rewilding (Zimov's Pleistocene Park, rewilding Europe) reintroduces large herbivores and predators to restore top-down ecological processes — controversial regarding non-native proxies and societal conflicts with livestock farming.
12. What is "One Health" approach in conservation medicine?
💡 One Health recognizes that 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — originating in wildlife (COVID-19, Ebola, HIV). Human health, animal health, and ecosystem health are inseparable and must be addressed together.
13. What is "umbrella species" in conservation strategy?
💡 Umbrella species (tigers, grizzly bears, spotted owls) have large habitat requirements — protecting them automatically protects extensive habitats containing hundreds of other species sharing the same ecosystem.
14. What is the "Allee effect" in population ecology?
💡 The Allee effect shows positive density-dependence at low populations — passenger pigeons needed large flocks for breeding behavior, so below a threshold population, reproduction failed even though individuals survived.
15. What is the "extinction vortex" concept in conservation biology?
💡 The extinction vortex (Gilpin & Soule, 1986) shows how small populations spiral toward extinction — inbreeding reduces fitness, reducing population, increasing inbreeding, reducing fitness further in an accelerating cycle.
16. What is the "shifting baseline syndrome" in conservation?
💡 Shifting baseline syndrome (Pauly, 1995) describes how each generation of scientists and public uses their childhood environment as normal — progressively accepting degraded states as baselines, masking the true scale of wildlife loss.
17. What is the "minimum viable population" (MVP) in conservation biology?
💡 MVP is the smallest population size at which a species can persist without inbreeding depression, demographic stochasticity, or random catastrophes causing extinction — typically estimated at 50-5,000 individuals depending on species.
18. What is "ecological stoichiometry" in conservation ecology?
💡 Ecological stoichiometry examines how nutrient ratios (C:N:P ratios) in producers affect herbivore fitness — forests with high C:N ratios provide poor nutrition, affecting animal population dynamics and ecosystem function.
19. What is "acoustic ecology" and how is human noise pollution affecting marine animals?
💡 Acoustic ecology studies natural soundscapes — ocean noise pollution (shipping, sonar, drilling) has increased 100-fold, masking whale communication, disrupting navigation, causing strandings, and interfering with predator-prey acoustics.