Risk of extinction of species in an ecological system: Estimation and analysis

Abstract

Many animal and plant species have become extinct or at the verge of extinction in the last few decades due to unplanned activity and indiscriminate use of biological resources. The disappearance of such species has potential impact on the ecological system. Thus the extinction status of rare and endangered species is getting importance so that conservation policy can be framed in order to maintain the ecological balance. In this paper we formulate a process of determining two important extinction related issues viz. probability of extinction and time to extinction. Discrete Time Markov Chain model is utilized to find the time to extinction and probability of extinction. A particular prey-predator model is taken under consideration to justify the theoretical findings by simulation process.