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An article in the LA Times discusses a publication in the journal Science (abstract) on why humans as predators have a much greater ecological impact than other predators.
From the LA Times article, it is because:
... humans have a very different, and problematic, hunting strategy from nature's other successful hunters. Humans tend to pick out adults rather than younger, smaller, weaker members of a species.
The article goes on to use an analogy:
Think of it from a business perspective, the researchers said. An adult female, for example, is like your capital; the young that she produces are the interest generated by that capital. If you kill an adult animal today, it will take years for another to grow up and take her place. But if you kill a young animal, it will (theoretically) take only until the next breeding season to produce another. In other words, it's better to use the up [sic] interest rather than to draw down the capital, because the capital is much more difficult to build back. Once it's gone, it's gone -- and so is the interest.
This has several consequences, including for the evolution of the prey species. For example, killing the biggest or strongest animals (as might be done with trophy hunting) potentially leads to smaller or weaker future generations.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday August 23 2015, @01:20AM
I agree with your second paragraph. But what do you mean by "reduced genetic diversity leading to single-point-of-failure managed ecosystems"? Wild animal genetic pool size doesn't factor in to cow, chicken, and other farm raised animals. Look at dogs, for example. The majority of dogs are domesticated and the rare wild ones are often caught (and killed, unfortunately). People have been breeding dogs for so long that they have created even more variety than there was before domestication. Wild animals simply don't matter for dogs anymore.
Also, i am certain that poaching IS taken into account because most wildlife managers track population size. They don't just issue permits because they saw a few wild animals out there somewhere. They issue enough permits to prevent over-population of a given area, that is all. Often there are further restrictions on gender, or size, or weight.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 23 2015, @02:45AM
Domesticated animals generally have a reduced genetic diversity. Frequently sharply reduced. The Potato is a possible exception, but this is due to its intractable reproductive system. An extreme example is the bananna. I'd include the naval orange except that sexually reproducing oranges still exist. Animals and plants that evolve asexual reproduction generally go extinct rather quickly. (An exception is the bdelloid rotifers, and nobody understands why.)
Farmers like genetically standardized crops, because they're easy to manage and predict. Unfortunately, if (when?) a disease evolves that kills any of them, it's likely to kill all of them. The ancestral corn plants can no longer be interbred with domestic corn, and domestic corn has a grossly reduced genetic variation WRT maize. Maize (or things called "indian corn") still exist, but:
a) they are quite rare, so their own genetic diversity has been strongly reduced, and
b) I'm not sure to what extent current maize even retains the basic characteristics of the ancestral stock. (I.e., you could plant it in a place where it could get enough water, and with a fish buried under it, and wouldn't need to care for it until harvest.) Do note, however, that even maize had been so reduced in diversity that it was genetically dependant on humans to survive. It couldn't disperse its own seeds.
So. Single point of failure: If a large population is dependant on a single food crop, say corn, rice, or wheat, and something happens that destroys that plant, then the population will starve. This is likely to destroy to social system that said population lives within.
P.S.: Have you heard that wild triticale, from which we derived wheat, is going extinct? Last I heard efforts were being made to save it, but I haven't heard how effective those efforts have been, and civil war has broken out in that area (the Middle East). When I last heard, a few years ago, the war wasn't in the same area, but is seems to have been spreading wildly, so it's quite likely the project had to be abandoned. That is a single point of failure for additional genes to add back into wheat. Triticale was resistent to many rusts (i.e. fungi) that can destroy all wheat crops.. So far fungicides have sufficed to control them, most of the time.
And that's another "single point of failure". There are *many* of them. (Perhaps ancestral wheat stocks were transplanted to somewhere safer. If so, I haven't heard.)
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