If you wanted to save species from extinction would it be be

If you wanted to save species from extinction, would it be better to preserve a small population or a large population? Explain

Solution

It would be better to preserve a small population than a large population to save species from extinction. Small populations are prone to many ecological threats that push them to the verge of extinction. Studying the species of the small population and the ecological, biological and physiological threats faced them would be comfortable and affordable, to plan a right way overcome those hurdles.

Justus Leibig in 1840, proposed a Law of Minimum, which showed that growth of crop plants is dependent on the amount of the nutrient available in minimum quantity. Later Blackmann (1905) observed that the rate of photosynthesis is governed by the amount of the factor that is operating at a limiting level. For example, the photosynthesis is affected by the light intensity and the availability of carbon dioxide. If all other factors are at the optimum, a small quantity of carbon dioxide would be limiting and simply increasing the light intensity will not enhance the rate of photosynthesis. This is known as the principle of limiting factors. Studying such limiting factors operating in a small population would be appropriate to understand and divert the species from the verge of extinction.