The major thrust of the legitimate conservation agencies is towards
preserving biodiversity. One of the biggest problems for a hobbyist like
myself is preserving genetic diversity - in some cases I have resurrected
a species of pygmy Drosera within my collection using the gemmae from
just one plant, which strikes me as very dangerous.
Assuming two equal sized populations of a particular species in identical
growing conditions, one containing a natural pool of genetic diversity
and the other being a single clone, how many generations would it take
for the two to exhibit a similar diversity of genetic material? Has anyone
conducted any studies in this area? Obviously there are a lot of factors
influencing the answer, for example the ratio of sexual to asexual
reproduction, but even an educated guess of say a million generations
would enable some sort of scope to be put on the problem.
Regards, Nigel Hurneyman