Population

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

For other uses, see Population (disambiguation).

The distribution of human world population in 1994

Key

In biology, a population is all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a
particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding.[1][2] The area that is used to
define a sexual population is defined as the area where inter-breeding is potentially possible
between any pair within the area, and where the probability of interbreeding is greater than the
probability of cross-breeding with individuals from other areas.[3]
In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans. Demography is a social science which
entails the statistical study of human populations. Population in simpler terms is the number of
people in a city or town, region, country or world; population is usually determined by a process
called census (a process of collecting, analyzing, compiling and publishing data)
This article refers mainly to human population.

Contents
[hide]

 1Population genetics (ecology)

 2World human population
o 2.1Predicted growth and decline
o 2.2Control
 3See also
 4References
 5External links
Population genetics (ecology)[edit]
In population genetics a sexual population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members
can breed together. This means that they can regularly exchange gametes to produce normally-
fertile offspring, and such a breeding group is also known therefore as a Gamo deme. This also
implies that all members belong to the same species.[4] If the Gamo deme is very large (theoretically,
approaching infinity), and all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, the
Gamo deme is said to be panmictic. Under this state, allele (gamete) frequencies can be converted
to genotype (zygote) frequencies by expanding an appropriate quadratic equation, as shown by
Sir Ronald Fisher in his establishment of quantitative genetics.[5]
This seldom occurs in nature: localization of gamete exchange – through dispersal limitations,
preferential mating, cataclysm, or other cause – may lead to small actual Gamo demes which
exchange gametes reasonably uniformly within themselves but are virtually separated from their
neighboring Gamo demes. However, there may be low frequencies of exchange with these
neighbors. This may be viewed as the breaking up of a large sexual population (panmictic) into
smaller overlapping sexual populations. This failure of panmixia leads to two important changes in
overall population structure: (1) the component Gamo demos vary (through gamete sampling) in
their allele frequencies when compared with each other and with the theoretical panmictic original
(this is known as dispersion, and its details can be estimated using expansion of an
appropriate binomial equation); and (2) the level of homozygosity rises in the entire collection of
Gamo demes. The overall rise in homozygosity is quantified by the inbreeding coefficient (f or φ).
Note that all homozygotes are increased in frequency – both the deleterious and the desirable. The
mean phenotype of the Gamo demes collection is lower than that of the panmictic original – which is
known as inbreeding depression. It is most important to note, however, that some dispersion lines
will be superior to the panmictic original, while some will be about the same, and some will be
inferior. The probabilities of each can be estimated from those binomial equations.
In plant and animal breeding, procedures have been developed which deliberately utilize the effects
of dispersion (such as line breeding, pure-line breeding, backcrossing). It can be shown that
dispersion-assisted selection leads to the greatest genetic advance (ΔG=change in the phenotypic
mean), and is much more powerful than selection acting without attendant dispersion. This is so for
both allogamous (random fertilization)[6] and autogamous (self-fertilization) Gamo demes.[7]
In ecology, the population of a certain species in a certain area can be estimated using the Lincoln
Index.