Ice Bridge Case Study

For over 40 years one man dedicated his summer to study the strange occurences of wolves on an isolated island in northern Michigan. A pack of wolves walked across an ice bridge to the island of Isle Royale and began living in this new location. By leaving their native habitat the wolves left behind their gene pool and was left with a poor genetic composition because they were trapped on the island due to the melting of the ice bridge. The most logical explanation for why the wolves traveled to this island is that they assumed that the ice bridge was a corridor or natural strip of habitat that connects populations. Over the years climate change slowly melted the ice bridge and trapped the wolves on Isle Royale. Over many decades the wolf population began to slowly decline because of a week …show more content…
The original population on Isle Royale were apart of a metapopulation because they were separated from the rest of their relatives on the island but still had access to them via the ice bridge. Once the ice bridge vanished the wolves were stuck into an inbreeding depression. This is when individuals of a population with similar genotypes breed with each other and produce offspring that have an impaired ability to survive and reproduce. When this occurs within an isolated population such as Isle Royale the end result of extinction among the individuals is almost inevitable over time. This new habitat that they were stuck in had a low population density and was very detrimental to the wolves because they typically live together in a clumped population distribution. This specific situation has all the wrong parts associated with it because now the gene pool is stuck to these specific individuals and their is very little genetic variation among them to allow the wolves to actively reproduce and survive for generations to