Professional Documents
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Michael E. Soul
BioScience, Vol. 35, No. 11, The Biological Diversity Crisis. (Dec., 1985), pp. 727-734.
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Fri Dec 21 11:10:37 2007
What is Conservation Biology?
Michael E. SoulC
conservation biology
Figure 1. Cancer biology and conservation biology are both synthetic, multidisciplinary sciences. The dashed line indicates the
artificial nature of the borders between disciplines and between "basic" and "applied" research. See text.
a1 parks should consider the impact of conservation biologists frequently fo- holistic is the assumption that multi-
the park on indigenous peoples and cus on individual endangered, critical, disciplinary approaches will ultimate-
their cultures, on the local economy, or kevstone s~ecies. ly be the most fruitful. Conservation
and on opportunity costs such as for- ~ohservatiAnbiology tends to be biology is certainly holistic in this
feited logging profits. holistic, in two senses of the word. sense. Modern biogeographic analysis
There is much over la^ between First, many conservation biologists, is now being integrated into the con-
conservation biology and the natural including many wildlife specialists, servation movement (Diamond 1975,
resource fields, especially fisheries bi- assume that ecological and evolution- Simberloff and Abele 1976, Terborgh
ology, forestry, and wildlife manage- ary processes must be studied at their 1974, Wilcox 1980). Population ge-
ment. Nevertheless, two characteris- own macrosco~iclevels and that re- netics, too, is now being applied to
tics of these fields often distinguish ductionism alone cannot lead to ex- the technology of wildlife manage-
them from conservation biology. The planations of community and ecosys- ment (Frankel 1974, Frankel and Soul6
first is the dominance in the resource tem processes such as body-size 1981, Schonewald-Cox et al. 1983,
fields of utilitarian, economic objec- differences among species in guilds Soul6 and Wilcox 1980). Multidis-
tives. Even though individual wildlife (Cody and Diamond 1975), pollina- ciplinary research, involving govern-
biologists honor Aldo Leopold's land tor-plant coevolution (Gilbert and ment agencies and wildlife biologists, is
ethic and the intrinsic value of nature, Raven 1975), succession, speciation, also evident in recent efforts to illumi-
most of the financial resources for and species-area relationships. Even nate the question of viable population
management must go to enhancing ecological reductionists, however, size (Salwasser et al. 1984).
commercial and recreational values agree that the proper objective of Another distinguishing characteris-
for humans. The emphasis is on our conservation is the protection and tic of conservation biology is its time
natural resources. continuity of entire communities and scale. Generally, its practitioners at-
The second distinguishing charac- ecosvstems. The holistic a s s u m ~ t i o n tach less weight to aesthetics, maxi-
teristic is the nature of these re- of cdnservation biology should n'ot be mum yields, and profitability, and
sources. For the most part, they are a confused with romantic notions that more to the long-range viability of
small number of particularly valuable one can grasp the functional intrica- whole systems and species, including
target species (e.g., trees, fishes, deer, cies of complex systems without con- their evolutionary potential. Long-
and waterfowl)-a tiny fraction of ducting scientific and technological term viability of natural communities
the total biota. This distinction is studies of individual components usually implies the persistence of di-
beginning to disappear, however, as (Levins and Lewontin 1985, chap. 6). versity, with little o r no help from
some natural resource agencies be- Holism is not mysticism. humans. But for the foreseeable fu-
come more "ecological" and because The second implication of the term ture, such a passive role for managers
December 1985
species. Ryder and Wedemeyer (1982)
pioneered retrospective genetic analy-
Retention of 90% of Original Genetic sis of c a ~ t i v estocks with the obiective
Variation for 200 Years of equalizing founder representation.
At the National Zoo in Washington,
DC. Ralls and Ballou (1983) have
pro;ided incontrovertibie evidence
for the universality of inbreeding de-
pression in mammals [see November
1984 BioScience 34: 606-610, 6121.
Many authors have appealed for
larger founder sizes in groups of cap-
Founder size N, = 10
tivelv bred animals to minimize in-
breeding problems and the loss of
genetic variability (Senner 1980, Tem-
leto on and Read 1983). but s~ecific
'guidelines have been lacking. ~ e c e n t
A analyses have clarified the interrela-
tionships between founder size and
several other variables, including gen-
Founder s ~ z eN, = 20 eration length, maximum captive
group size (carrying capacity), and
group growth rate (Figure 2).
Conservation biology has also con-
tributed to the design and manage-
ment of wildland areas. An example
is the new field of ~ o ~ u l a t i oviabilitv
L L
n
ULTIMATE EFFECTIVE POPULATION SIZE (K) analysis, whose goal is to estimate the
(effective) number of individuals
Figure 2. Combinations of effective population sizes and generation lengths (in years) in needed to maintain a species' long-
managed populations required to maintain at least 90% of the genetic variation that term genetic fitness a n d ensure
existed in the source population; the program lasts 200 years. The calculations on against extinction from other, nonge-
which the curves are based assume an intrinsic population growth rate of 1.0% per netic causes. Several relatively inde-
year. For curve C, the founder size is equal to the ultimate size of the managed pendent pathways of research in pop-
population. Minimum founder sizes for most species are in the range of 15 to 30 (from ulation biology, community ecology,
Soul6 et al., in press). and biogeography are being joined in
this effort. which I believe will con-
tribute significantly to theoretical
1985; and the journal Environmental birds will have to be maintained arti- population biology. One approach is
Ethics). ficially if they are to avoid premature to integrate demographic stochasti-
Endless scholarly debate will prob- extinction (Mvers 1984. Soul6 et al.. citv (random variation in birth and
ably take place about the religious, in press). EveAtual advances in tech: deAth rates and sex ratio) and envi-
ethical, and scientific sources of this nology may enable some, if not most, ronmental variation to predict the
postulate and about its implications such species to be kept in a suspend- probability of survival (Leigh 1981,
for policy and management. For ex- ed, miniaturized state, such as frozen Shaffer and Samson 1985). This ap-
ample, does intrinsic value imply sperm, ova, and embryos. Mean- proach is leading to very large esti-
egalitarianism a n d equal rights while, however, traditional ways to mates for long-term viability.3
among species? A more profitable dis- maintain most of the planet's mega- Genetics is also i m ~ o r t a nin
t viabil-
cussion would be about the rules to fauna must be improved. ity analysis. At leas; in outbreeding
be used when two or more species In recent years, the breeding of species, it appears that relatively het-
have conflicting interests (Naess endangered species has undergone erozygous individuals are frequently
1985). profound changes as physiologists more fit than relatively homozygous
and geneticists have become involved. ones. Many fitness criteria have been
Contributions of conservation Active research is sponsored by many studied, including growth rates, over-
biology zoos. At the San Diego Zoo, new winter survival, longevity, develop-
techniques were developed for the mental stability, metabolic efficiency,
Recently, rapid progress has been determination of sex in sexuallv and scope for growth (for reviews see
made by zoos and similar institutions monomorphic bird species (Bercovitz Beardmore 1983, Frankel and Soul6
in the technology and theory of cap- et al. 1978). Other workers (e.g., Ben-
tive breeding of endangered species. It irschke 1983) have found cvtogenetic> " 'Gary Belovsky and Daniel Goodman, 1985,
is becoming apparent that nearly explanations for the poor reproduc- personal communications. University of Michi-
2000 species of large mammals and tive performance of several mammal gan and Montana State University.
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