Small Population Size - Demographic Effects

Demographic Effects

The influence of stochastic variation in demographic (reproductive and mortality) rates is much higher for small populations than large ones. Stochastic variation in demographic rates causes small populations to fluctuate randomly in size. The smaller the population the greater the probability that fluctuations will lead to extinction. They are subject to a higher chance of extinction because they are more vulnerable to genetic drift, resulting in stochastic variation in their gene pool, their demography and their environment.

One demographic consequence of a small population size, the probability that all offspring in a generation are of the same sex, and where males and females are equally likely to be produced (see sex ratio), is easy to calculate: it is given by (The chance of all animals being females is ; the same holds for all males, thus this result). This can be a problem in very small populations. In 1977, the last 18 Kakapo on a Fiordland island in New Zealand were all male, though the probability of this would only be 0.0000076 if determined by chance (however, females are generally more predated than males and kakapo may be subject to sex allocation). With a population of just three individuals the probability of them all being the same sex is 0.25. Put another way, for every four species reduced to three individuals (or more precisely three individuals in the effective population), one will go extinct within one generation just because they are all the same sex. If the population remains at this size for several generations, such an event becomes almost inevitable.