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Minimum Viable Population
 
 
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Minimum viable population (MVP) is a lower bound on the population of a species, such that it can survive in the wild. This term is used in the fields of biology, ecology
Ecology

Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
, and conservation biology
Conservation biology

Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction....
. More specifically MVP is the smallest possible size at which a biological population can exist without facing extinction from natural disasters or demographic, environmental, or genetic stochastic
Stochastic

Stochastic means random.A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-Deterministic system in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element....
ity. The term "population" refers to the population of a species in the wild.






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Minimum viable population (MVP) is a lower bound on the population of a species, such that it can survive in the wild. This term is used in the fields of biology, ecology
Ecology

Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
, and conservation biology
Conservation biology

Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction....
. More specifically MVP is the smallest possible size at which a biological population can exist without facing extinction from natural disasters or demographic, environmental, or genetic stochastic
Stochastic

Stochastic means random.A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-Deterministic system in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element....
ity. The term "population" refers to the population of a species in the wild. For example, the undomesticated dromedary
Dromedary

The Dromedary camel is a large even-toed ungulate. It is often referred to as the one-humped camel, Arabian camel, or simply as the "dromedary"....
 is extinct in its natural wild habitat; but there is a domestic population in captivity and an additional feral population
Australian feral camel

The ancestors of Australian feral camels were dromedary camels imported to provide transport through inland Australia, which their feral descendants have since made their domain....
 in Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
. Two groups of house cats in separate houses which are not allowed outdoors are also technically distinct populations. Typically, however, MVP is used to refer solely to a wild population, such as the red wolf
Red Wolf

The Red Wolf is a North American canid which once roamed throughout the Southeastern United States and is a Last glacial period survivor of the Late Pleistocene epoch....
.

Estimating the MVP

Minimum Viable Population is usually estimated as the population size necessary to ensure between 90 and 95 percent probability of survival between 100 to 1000 years into the future. The MVP can be estimated using computer simulation
Computer simulation

A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulation an abstract model of a particular system....
s for population viability analyses
Population viability analysis

Population viability analysis is a species-specific method of risk assessment frequently used in conservation biology. It is traditionally defined as the process that determines the probability that a population will go extinct within a given number of years....
 (PVA). PVA models populations using demographic and environmental information to project future population dynamics. The probability assigned to a PVA is arrived at after repeating the environmental simulation thousands of times.

For example, a simulation of a population of fifty giant pandas in which the simulated population goes completely extinct thirty out of one hundred stochastic simulations when projected one hundred years into the future is not viable. Causes of extincition in the simulation may include inbreeding depression
Inbreeding depression

Inbreeding depression is reduced fitness in a given population as a result of breeding of related individuals. Breeding between closely related individuals, called inbreeding, results in more recessive deleterious traits manifesting themselves....
, natural disaster
Natural disaster

A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard which affects human activities. Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental or human losses....
, or climate change
Climate change

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region over an appropriately significant period of time....
. Extinction occurring thirty out of one hundred runs would give a survival probability of seventy percent. In the same simulation with a starting population of sixty pandas, the panda population may only go extinct on four of the hundred runs for a survival probability of 95 percent. In this case the minimum viable population that satisfies the 90 to 95 percent probability for survival is between 50 and 60 pandas.(Numbers were invented for the purpose of this example.)

MVP and extinction

MVP does not take human intervention into account. Thus, it is useful for conservation managers and environmentalists; a population may be increased above the MVP using a captive breeding program, or by bringing other members of the species in from other reserves.

There is naturally some debate on the accuracy of PVAs, since a wide variety of assumptions generally are required for future forecasting; however, the important consideration is not absolute accuracy, but promulgation of the concept that each species indeed has an MVP, which at least can be approximated for the sake of conservation biology and Biodiversity Action Plan
Biodiversity Action Plan

This article is about a conservation biology topic. For other uses of BAP, see BAP .A 'Biodiversity Action Plan' is an internationally recognized program addressing threatened species and habitats and is designed to protect and restore biological systems....
s.

There is a marked trend
Inbreeding depression

Inbreeding depression is reduced fitness in a given population as a result of breeding of related individuals. Breeding between closely related individuals, called inbreeding, results in more recessive deleterious traits manifesting themselves....
 for insularity
Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
, surviving genetic bottlenecks and r-strategy to allow far lower MVPs than average. Conversely, taxa easily affected by inbreeding depression – having high MVPs – are often decidedly K-strategists, with low population densities while occurring over a wide range. An MVP of 500 to 1000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored. When inbreeding effects are included, estimates of MVP for many species are in the 1000s. Based on a meta-analysis of reported values in the literature for many species, Traill et al. reported a median MVP of 4169 individuals.

Population uncertainty

Population uncertainty may be divided into four sources:
  1. Demographic stochasticity
  2. Environmental stochasticity
  3. Natural catastrophes
  4. Genetic stochasticity


See also

  • Effective population size
    Effective population size

    In population genetics, the concept of effective population size Ne was introduced by the United States geneticist Sewall Wright, who wrote two landmark papers on it ....
  • Nurgaliev's law
    Nurgaliev's law

    In population dynamics, Nurgaliev's equation sayswhere 'n' is the size of a population, a is a half of the average probability of a birth of a male of a potential arbitrary parents pair within a year, b is an average probability of a death of a person within a year....