Introduced Species and Habitat Fragmentation
Humans have been introducing species world wide to environments for a long time both directly such as establishing a population to be used as a biological control and indirectly such as accidental escapes of individuals out of agriculture. This causes drastic global effects on various populations with hybridization being one of the reasons introduced species can be so detrimental. When habitats become broken apart, one of two things can occur, genetically speaking. The first is that populations that were once connected can be cut off from one another, preventing their genes from interacting. Occasionally, this will result in a population of one species breeding with a population of another species as a means of surviving such as the case with the red wolves. Their population numbers being so small, they needed another means of survival. Habitat fragmentation also led to the influx of generalist species into areas where they would not have been, leading to competition and in some cases interbreeding/incorporation of a population into another. In this way, habitat fragmentation is essentially an indirect method of introducing species to an area.
Read more about this topic: Mammal Hybrids, Hybrids in Nature, Anthropogenic Hybridization
Famous quotes containing the words introduced, species and/or habitat:
“The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Both classically- and romantically-minded spirits—inasmuch as these two species always exist—occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)