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Human Interactions And Its Effects On The Ecosystem

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Scientists believe that by 2050, 15-40% (Thomas et al, 2013) of all plants and animals will be extinct because of changing climates, habitat loss and the result of human interactions. They are surveying their options and are debating the positives and negatives of different ways to stave off species extinction. In the past, the most common options to save a population was to relocate populations to monitor good habitats, putting keystone species back into populations (keystone species have big impact on the ecosystem) and possibly recovering extinct species (Thomas et al, 2013). These options can be risky and disturb every individual in the population, a less risky way to help conserve organisms is facilitated adaptation. There are two ways to do facilitated adaptation: one involves a subspecies of the original organism that has beneficial traits to help it survive. They are introduced, allowing them to interbreed and pass on genes to their offspring as a form of natural selection. As more organisms interbreed and give birth to more offspring with the gene to help them survive, the population will become stronger and more abundant. For example, a species that successful went through facilitated adaption is the Florida panther (Lovako, 2014), where eight cats of the panther subspecies were introduced to the population. They interbred, mixed genes and increased the panther genetic diversity and population by 100% (Lovako, 2014).
The other more specific way for facilitated

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