Mother Caring for 7 Billion

Increase in population occurred around 10000 years ago; due to agriculture

Population Bomb by Eurlich; lead to Zero Population Growth groups surfacing
Population growth + consumption main contributors to climate change; demand for
resources higher than nature can restore
Majority of world is under 28 = prime stage for siring offsprig
Ethiopia, fast population growth has driven majority to poverty due to lack of education
Lack of family planning and education in the developing world reduces access to
medicine and proper treatment
Population Media Centers are aiding in education women; 70% in poverty are women
The Girl Effect= education women to increase health and standard of living
Norway/Sweden has low population growth but high standard of living = early care
intervention
Genetic Rescue Guidelines of Mexican Wolves/Florida Panters- Hedrick + Fredrickson
Genetic rescue= increase fitness of pop by introducing unrelated individuals; reduce
genetic load and not inbreeding depression
Recognition of inbreeding depression most significant genetic factor to conservation
In captive pedigree pop, managed by minimizing mean kinship between parents
Pop can be divided into groups with limited gene flow between them
Genetic load= reduction in mean fitness of pop due to high frequency of detrimental gene
1) Should be evidence of low fitness/high inbreeding in endangered pop
2) For success, a closely related donor pop should be available to reduce outbreeding
(crosses from diff pop have lower fitness than crosses from same pop)
3) Experimental data from captive pop needed to support genetic rescue
4) There should be an established translocation protocol to limit introduction of disease
5) There should be a detailed monitoring plan to track outcomes in future generations
6) There should be potential for management continuation over time to modify intro
7) Swamping of local genetic variations due to high donor pop ancestry; keep donor pop
low to maintain local genetic variation
8) Small effective pop size due to high ancestry from few donor individuals; inclusion of
endangered pop in as many crosses as possible is necessary
9) Short lived fitness increase due to eventual reduction in homozygosity
10) Impact may be greatest on first attempt; reduced effect over 2
nd
and 3
rd
translocations
Mexican Wolves hunted extensively and now found in isolated groups
All new wolves descend from 3 captive lineages: McBride, Aragon, Ghost Ranch
Cross-lineage wolves in McBride had inc pup pop and lower inbreeding coefficient, but
introduction may have been too late
Florida Panther pop extensively hunted to low pop; deleterious traits observed in pop
suggesting genetic drift had fixed these variations
Low sperm count, cryptorchidism (undescended testes), heart defects, low mol variation
Introduce Texas Panther, saw decline in deleterious traits, and increase pop size
Genetic restoration= restore genetic variation and remove deleterious traits
Both species continue to have high human-caused mortality; vehicle deaths and shootings


Rapid Changes to Our Genome Imposed Diet- Patin + Quitana-Muci
Transition to farming resulted in a heavy disease-burden pop; not used to new diet
Farming adopted less diverse, energy and carbohydrate rich diet of cereals, fatty meats,
dairy products, starchy tubers, alcohol, and salt
Amylase breaks down starch and found on chromosome 1p21
High genetic variation between pop with high and low starch diets at AMY1 loci
Low copy# in apes = low amylase production; gradually increased with transition to
farming and high starch diests
Amylase adapting much slower than lactase persistence; lactase is a dominant allele
Unnatural Selection- Stenseth + Dunlop
Human-harvested pop cause a faster phenotypic change than natural agents
See decrease in body size, and reproductive age
Pop is expected to recover more slowly from genetic (evolution) than plastic (ecological
changes
Breeders Equation: R=h^2 * S; response of trait to selection, heritability, selection diff
Selection differential due to harvesting is higher than due to natural agents
Mortality from commercial fishing is 400% higher than natural mortality
Overfishing causes sexual maturation at younger and smaller sizes; larger fish harvested
Human-Induced Evolution Through Harvest of Wild Animals- Allendorf + Hard
Selective removal brings about genetic change in harvested pop; this increases frequency
of less desirable phenotpyes
Evolution under exploitation can reduce pop growth and decrease yield
Fishing selection will reduce means and alter variability of size, fecundity, and age
Game hunting focuses on animals with low reproductive output and natural mortality
Genetic consequences= altered pop structure, loss of genetic variation, selective evolution
Red Fox, the silver morph frequency declined to 5% due to harvestation
This selective removal reduces effective pop size drastically
Exploitation results in reduced sexual selection= reduced offspring fitness
Sustainable harvests allow natural/sexual selection to maximize reproductive fitness
Darwinian Debt= selective removal results in traits that take longer to recover to normal
Century of Ammonia Syntheis- Galloway + Sutton + Klimont + Winiwarter
Carl Bosch applied high-pressure chemical engineering on industrial scale
Extensive applications in war; oxidation of ammonia to nitric acid produces explosives
Fueled the WWI and aided in Germanys defence when Peruvian blockades occurred
Nitrogen application increased crop yield, and support for humans on arable land
There is an extremely low nitrogen-use efficiency in agriculture
Excessive atmospheric N2 lead to unintentional fertilization and loss of biodiversity
Factors that affect fertilizer use: 1) Increasing pop growth 2) Increasing yield/hectare and
fertilizer efficiency 3) Biofuel production 4) Food equity will increase worldwide meat
production 5) Human diets will improve nitrogen-conversion efficiency in product cycle
Increase in efficiency will compensate for increase in fertilizer demand
The Gulf of Mexico and Haber-Bosch- Mingle
80% of fixed nitrogen goes into fertilizer production
Negative effects include soil acidification, reduced biodiversity, air pollution, GHGs
Fertilizer runoffs result in dead zones= algae blooms reduce oxygen levels for organisms
Nitrogen-use efficiency is very low, and relatively small data on nitrogen application
Most nitrogen from harvested crops go towards feeding livestock and not humans
Demitarianism= reduce meat consumption for environmental reasons
Cool the Earth, Save The Economy- Harte + Harte
Atmospheric CO2 has increased by 30% since the Industrial Revolution
Four patterns of warming: 1) polar areas warming faster than middle latitudes 2) winter
temp rising faster than summer temp 3) night rising faster than day temp 4) troposphere is
warming while stratosphere is cooling
Prehistoric climate changes happened much less rapidly, over tens to thousands of years
Leveling off of temp in 1940-1970 due to increase in amount of coal stack pollution in air
Climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of atmospheric events