Habitat fragmentation, as the name implies, describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation can be caused by geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation), or by human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes extinctions of many species.
Read more about Habitat Fragmentation: Definition, Natural Causes and Effects, Human Causes, Implications, Reduced Viability, Conservation Implications
Famous quotes containing the word habitat:
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)