Conservation Genetics - Contributors To Extinction

Contributors To Extinction

1. Inbreeding and inbreeding elevation which reduces the fitness of populations.
2. The accumulation of deleterious mutations
3. A decrease in frequency of heterozygotes in a population, or heterozygosity, which decreases a species’ ability to evolve to deal with change in the environment.
4. Adapting to conditions in captivity
5. Outbreeding depression
6. Fragmented populations
7. Taxonomic uncertainties, which can lead to a reprioritization of conservation efforts
8. Genetic drift as the main evolutionary process, instead of natural selection
9. Management units within species
10. Use of molecular techniques, such as allozymes as molecular markers, to analyze species in depth