Biological fitness is typically measured by the expected rate of reproduction, but strategies with high fitness can also have high probabilities of extinction.
If we don't do something, the rate of extinction is getting faster and faster".
We are currently losing species at 1000 times the background rate – that is, the natural rate of extinction.
Extinction has always been part of life on earth, but current rates are alarmingly high a thousand times greater than what scientists call the background (or normal) rate of extinction, according to a recent study.
Gesture Toward Hard Times: "The rate of extinction is now a thousand times higher than before humans entered the scene.
While extinction occurs naturally, he said, the current rate of extinction rivals the very high rates during earlier geological epochs when meteors crashed into Earth and tidal waves swept over vast land masses.
So the message is loud and clear: gardeners could slow the rate of extinction by planting natives in their yards.
We are now seeing an extinction rate of species about a thousand-fold higher than the rate of extinction since the arrival of mankind on the planet.
These extinctions have happened continuously throughout the history of life, although the rate of extinction spikes in occasional mass extinction events.
The current rate of extinction, by some estimates, might well be thousands of times that number.
