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Ch. 54 - Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology

Chapter 53, Problem 8

Explain why the construction of wildlife corridors can help maintain genetic diversity in a fragmented landscape.

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Hello everyone here we have a question asking us which of the following could wildlife corridors potentially mitigate while life corridors facilitate the movement of individuals. This allows areas to be recolonized if a species is lost and enable the new introduction of new alleles that can counteract genetic drift. So we know that it can potentially mitigate genetic drift. It can also counteract inbreeding in small isolated populations, which tend to reduce genetic diversity. So we know that it could potentially mitigate inbreeding an area where an ecosystem changes abruptly from one another is known as an ecotone and due to more diverse ecological characteristics and the number of landscape elements, there is a higher density and biodiversity along the ecotone. This is called the edge effect. So right there at the edge where there is more diverse ecological characteristics, more diverse flora and number of landscape elements. That's called the edge effect. It generally has a negative impact on the biotic and physical environment and they're linked to habitat fragmentation destruction or degradation. When habitat fragmentation occurs, the parameter of the habitat increases, creating new borders and increasing the edge effects. Wildlife corridors can help to mitigate the effects of habitat fragmentation caused by the expanse of human development and mitigate the edge effect. So we also are mitigating the edge effect. So our answer here is deep all of the above. Thank you for watching. Bye
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