A disjunctive population, in
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
, is a colony of plants or animals, whose geographical locus is severed from the continuous range of the bulk of the species distribution. Although a disjunctive population may sometimes occur on an island,
[A.W.D. Larkum, Robert Joseph Orth and Carlos M. Duarte. 2006] which creates physical separation via water, a large percentage of disjunctive populations are separated from their main range simply by landmass. In some cases a disjunctive population represents a relatively small outlier population from the main range, but in other cases, such as for the
painted hunting dog
The African wild dog (''Lycaon pictus''), also called the painted dog or Cape hunting dog, is a wild canine which is a native species to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest wild canine in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus '' Lyc ...
, ''Lycaon pictus'', the entire population is scattered (throughout much of Africa) and is intrinsically disjunctive.
See also
*
Ecological island An ecological island is a term used in New Zealand, and increasingly in Australia, to refer to an area of land (not necessarily an actual island) isolated by natural or artificial means from the surrounding land, where a natural micro-habitat exist ...
*
Disjunct distribution
In biology, a taxon with a disjunct distribution is one that has two or more groups that are related but considerably separated from each other geographically. The causes are varied and might demonstrate either the expansion or contraction of a s ...
Notes
References
* A.W.D. Larkum, Robert Joseph Orth and Carlos M. Duarte. 2006. ''Seagrasses: biology, ecology, and conservation'', Published by Springer, , 9781402029424 691 pages
Ecology
{{ecology-stub