Risk of Population Extinction from Periodic and Abrupt Changes of Environment

TL;DR

This paper presents a simulation model analyzing how periodic and abrupt environmental changes impact the survival chances of genetically structured populations, considering factors like population size, genotype length, and climate change characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation framework that models population survival under environmental fluctuations with genetic structure, considering both oscillatory and catastrophic changes.

Findings

Survival depends on maximum population size and genotype length.

Environmental change frequency and scale significantly affect extinction risk.

Genetic diversity influences resilience to climate shifts.

Abstract

A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a sexual character with recombination and mutation. Two cases are considered - oscillatory changes of the environment and abrupt ones (catastrophes). We show how the survival chance of a population depends on maximum allowed size of the population, the length of the genotypes characterising individuals, selection pressure and the characteristics of the climate changes, either their period of oscillations or the scale of the abrupt shift.