Determine the effective population size of the current population located on an island. You conduct a census and determine there are about 1500.
-Your initial survey indicated that there are 500 juveniles (Smaller, with no horns) on the island. What would you consider the effective population size to be?
To determine the effective population size (Ne), we need to consider multiple factors such as the number of breeding adults, sex ratio, age structure, and reproductive success. In this scenario, we have some information about the different age groups on the island.
First, let's establish a few assumptions:
1. Since juveniles are smaller and have no horns, we'll assume they are not yet capable of breeding.
2. We'll assume that the remaining individuals in the population are adults and are potentially capable of breeding.
Based on these assumptions, we can exclude the juveniles from our calculation of the effective population size because they are not contributing to the next generation. Therefore, we need to focus on the breeding adults in the population.
Since the initial survey stated that there are 1500 individuals in total and 500 of them are juveniles, we subtract the number of juveniles from the total population to get the number of breeding adults: 1500 - 500 = 1000.
So, for the purpose of calculating effective population size, we would consider the effective population size of the current population on the island to be 1000 breeding adults.