Extinction Of Species Essay

Introduction Extinction is defined as the end of an organism or of a group of organisms, normally a species. This phenomena is marked by the death of the last individual of the species, however the capacity to breed and recover may have already been lost. Extinction is a topic of great ecological importance because of its effects on biodiversity. Many recent studies focused on the conservation of species have put great effort into understanding these ecological factors that contribute to extinction (Slater et al. 2014). Information gained by understanding extinction of one species can provide insights into conservation methods designed for another species in order to prevent the extinction of that species. Many different ecological factors could be responsible for the extinction of a species. Those ecological factors fall under two categories, human induced causes and natural earth processes (Hogan 2014). Human induced causes include overpopulation, habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution and the introduction of new species to an environment. Habitat destruction may include factors like deforestation, corrosion, breaking down the natural habitat by

Hawaiian monk seal recovery may be limited by food availability, even at severely depleted population levels, which suggests that intensive overfishing has lowered the carrying capacity for large predators across coral reef ecosystems. Thus, successful recovery plans must include efforts to reduce pressure on overexploited fish stocks used by these marine predators. The reef fish and invertebrate biomass required to support Caribbean monk seal populations exceeds that observed in the most pristine and protected reef ecosystems in the Caribbean, and the average Caribbean reef has less than 25% of the fishes found on historical