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Science 24 October 1997:
Vol. 278. no. 5338, pp. 689 - 692
DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5338.689
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Reports

Population Diversity: Its Extent and Extinction

Jennifer B. Hughes, * Gretchen C. Daily, Paul R. Ehrlich

Genetically distinct populations are an important component of biodiversity. This work estimates the number of populations per area of a sample of species from literature on population differentiation and the average range area of a species from a sample of distribution maps. This yields an estimate of about 220 populations per species, or 1.1 to 6.6 billion populations globally. Assuming that population extinction is a linear function of habitat loss, approximately 1800 populations per hour (16 million annually) are being destroyed in tropical forests alone.

Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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