Biology Stack Exchange
Biology Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [extinction]

Extinction refers to the global disappearance of a taxon, caused by the death of the last individual member. Extinction can be used on many different levels and may relate to populations, groups of populations, species or higher taxa (such as families).

Extinction is sometimes also used to refer to local extinction, where a species disappears from a particular area but still exists in other places.

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Is there any evidence that sexual selection may lead to extinction of species?

Darwin suggested that sexual selection, especially by female choice, may counter natural selection. Theoretical models, such as a Fisherian runaway process, suggest that evolution of preference and preferred phenotypes may drive each other in ever…
Marta Cz-C
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What is the term for "technical extinction" of yet alive animals?

What is the term for an event in which a species is still alive, but has no chance of future reproduction and the species will be considered extinct once the current generation dies out? For example a species of a tiger that has the last 5 surviving…
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Are there any side-effects from a mosquitoes extinction?

Suppose that we have the ability to make mosquitoes extinct, what would be the likely effects (on disease and ecosystems for example) of such extinction? Essentially, what roles in nature do mosquitoes perform?
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How compelling is the hypothesis that dinosaurs were killed by toxic plants?

A friend of mine has recently told me that dinosaurs were "killed by flowers". I was a bit surprised and so I googled. And I did find a lot of recent articles in popular media on this topic, probably based on this. To me it doesn't sound convincing…
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Is there any evidence that humans have faced extinction before?

Have we as a species faced extinction in the past? Resulting in a 'population bottleneck'? If so, what genetic evidence is there of this occurring?
user3795
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Are there any documented cases of extinction of a species of fungus?

Are there any documented cases of extinction of a species of fungus? I imagine it would be hard to detect something like this. Edit: documented by humans when it happened and/or induced by humans.
d-b
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How did aquatic dinosaurs go extinct?

Dominant theory is that 'normal' dinosaurs went extinct from ether super volcano or meteor impact or combination of both. However there were aquatic dinosaurs that are not present at this day. Was it one of the events above that caused them to go…
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The almost extinct dinosaurs

Dinosaurs split into "lizard-hipped" and "bird-hipped" dinosaurs. Of these two groups, only the "lizard-hipped" (Saurischia) survived (these names are backwards). Of Saurischia, only Theropoda survived. The diverse Sauropodomorpha clade died out…
Kevin Kostlan
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Risks of latent viruses that reside in ancient genomes under research?

Some interesting research in reactivating mammoth genetic material (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40546-1) made me wonder what risks are inherent (or are not inherent) in reviving older genomes that may have integrated latent viral…
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What does the evidence suggest about how Neanderthals became extinct?

According to "Neanderthals: Facts About Our Extinct Human Relatives" (Szalay, 2013), Neanderthals dominated Europe during the last Ice Age, but may have died out before the arrival of Homo Sapiens (according to research detailed in "Radiocarbon…
user3795
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If Evolution Is In Progress, Why Fight Extinction?

Natural selection is a central tenet of evolution. However, most biologists seem determined to prevent the extinction of the species that have been selected against. Why is this? Preservation of genetic diversity? I thought evolution was supposed…
Dale
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Would a colony with only one male and female collapse?

This is a thought experiment: If we form a population with only a single founder pair, can this population survive? What would happen? Would this inbreeding cause the population to go extinct? Could such a population continue to exist indefinitely?
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Do we know of any "species ending bugs"?

Are we aware of a "bug" (virus, bacterium, prion, ...) that has completely exterminated an entire species? Either through direct observation or maybe some form of archeological evidence? If not, are there realistic scenarios where this could…
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Example of species that went extinct because of excessive hunting by non-humanoid predators?

I was wondering if there were any species that went extinct for being excessively hunted/eaten by predators? I don't mean human hunting. For example, I wish to know if there's a species of frog that are now extinct, because they were driven to…
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Is high metabolism linked to high evolutionary turnover?

I recently read The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker, a 1986 popular science book presenting arguments for an active lifestyle and high metabolic rate in dinosaurs. One of the arguments that Bakker presents relates to the pattern of species and…
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