Refugium (population biology)  

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In biology, a refugium (plural: refugia), sometimes termed simply a refuge or just a "fuge," is a location of an isolated or relict population of a once more widespread species. This isolation (allopatry) can be due to climatic changes, geography, or human activities such as deforestation and overhunting.

Present examples of refuge species are the mountain gorilla, isolated to specific mountains in central Africa, and the Australian Sea Lion, isolated to specific breeding beaches along the south-west coast of Australia, due to humans taking so many of their number as game. This resulting isolation, in many cases, can be seen as only a temporary state; however, some refugia may be longstanding, thereby having many endemic species, not found elsewhere, which survive as relict populations.

In anthropology, refugia often refers specifically to Last Glacial Maximum refugia, where some ancestral human populations may have been forced back to glacial refugia, similar small isolated pockets in the face of the continental ice sheets during the last ice age. Going from west to east, suggested examples include the Franco-Cantabrian region (in northern Iberia), the Italian, and Balkan peninsulas, Ukrainian LGM refuge, and the Bering Land Bridge.


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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Refugium (population biology)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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