What are Extinction Events?
This post will go through extinction events for Prelim Biology.
Topic: Population Dynamics
- Explain a recent extinction event
What is Extinction?
A species is extinct when there are no individuals from that species remaining. Extinction events can be background extinction, where a species will die out due to natural selection over a period of time or mass extinction when many species are eradicated due to a catastrophic event.
This video will go through extinction in a little more depth.
A Recent Extinction
The Thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian Tiger, was a large carnivorous marsupial that was native to Australia. The last known individual perished in 1936 in the Tasmanian Hobart Zoo.
Originally found in mainland Australia, the tiger was driven off due to competition with other species such as dingoes resulting in them being concentrated in Tasmania. With growing agricultural practices in the region, however, thylacines were beginning to be viewed as pests due to their killing of livestock and invasion of property. This led to mass hunting of the creature, eventually reducing their numbers to zero.
This video goes through their extinction in a little more depth.
This is footage of a thylacine.
Upcoming Extinction
The baseline extinction rate of a species is around 1 species per every one million species per year, currently, we are seeing a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times higher according to experts. This is largely due to the rapid population growth of humans as well as the exploitation of natural resources for human use.
This video is an interesting video on vultures and how their extinction can impact an ecosystem.
