title: Population diversity: its extent and extinction.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA.
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Daily
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Ehrlich
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D005828:Genetics, Population; D008433:Mathematics; D010944:Plants; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D011156:Population Density