jimh@qtc.UUCP (Jim Hurst) (05/31/90)
Jeff Frank writes: > >I am involved with a closed email group which is currently discussing the >salvation of wild populations of killifish. We are all killikeepers and >want to know things like, "How many fish of a wild strain are needed to >begin a species maintenance effort to stack the deck in favor of keeping >phenotype, if not genotype, stable from F0 thru FX (where X= infinity)?" >... >Does anyone have a simple program written in C which might better deal with >this genetic problem? An algorithim is probably sufficient. It is hoped >we can spearhead a worldwide program to preserve these and other fauna, and >good models will help lay groundwork. The book The Fragemented Forest, by Larry Harris, contains a good summary of population genetics, including a discussion of the minimum viable population. MVP varies greatly among species, dependent on things like generational overlap, breeding habits, ratio of males to females in the breeding pool, etc. The genetic resources of a species include much more than is observable from gross anatomy, and calculations can be made as to the percent of the genetic variation of a species is contained in (and can be preserved by) a given number of individuals. Both the width (number of individuals) and the length (number of generations) of a bottleneck greatly affect the amount of genetic diversity of a population reduced to a small percentage of its original size. The book also contains pointers to more in depth research. Since you're explicitly interested in species preservation, I would recommend the book Viable Populations for Conservation, edited by Michael Soule, Cambridge University Press, $16.95 ISBN 0-521-33657-0 I haven't read it, but the review says "Adresses the most recent research in the rapidly developing integration of conservation biology with population biology." Cheers, Jim Hurst PS: You're not the same Jeff Frank I knew in Cambridge in 1979-1983 are you?