This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Depensation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
In population dynamics, depensation is the effect on a population (such as a fish stock) whereby, due to certain causes, a decrease in the breeding population (mature individuals) leads to reduced production and survival of eggs or offspring. The causes may include predation levels rising per offspring (given the same level of overall predator pressure) and the Allee effect, particularly the reduced likelihood of finding a mate.
Critical depensation
When the level of depensation is high enough that the population is no longer able to sustain itself, it is said to be a critical depensation. This occurs when the population size has a tendency to decline when the population drops below a certain level (known as the "Critical depensation level"). Ultimately this may lead to the population or fishery's collapse (resource depletion), or even local extinction.
The phenomenon of critical depensation may be modelled or defined by a negative second order derivative of population growth rate with respect of population biomass, which describes a situation where a decline in population biomass is not compensated by a corresponding increase in marginal growth per unit of biomass.
See also
- Abundance (ecology)
- Conservation biology
- Local extinction
- Overexploitation
- Overfishing
- Small population size
- Threatened species
References
- Maroto, Jose M.; Moran, Manuel (2014). "Detecting the presence of depensation in collapsed fisheries: The case of the Northern cod stock". Ecological Economics. 97: 101. Bibcode:2014EcoEc..97..101M. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.11.006.
- ^ Quinn, Terrance (25 March 1999). Quantitative Fish Dynamics. Oxford University Press. p. 99. ISBN 9780195360400.
- Kar, Tapan Kumar; Misra, Swarnakamal. "Optimal Control of a Fishery under Critical Depensation". Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science. 1.
External links
- Optimal harvesting in the presence of critical depensation
- On line source of definitions and other fish info
This biology article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |