Genetic diversity
Genetic diversity is often lost within captive populations due to the founder effect and subsequent small population sizes. Minimizing the loss of genetic diversity within the captive population is an important component of "ex situ" conservation and is critical for successful reintroductions and the long term success of the species, since more diverse populations have higher adaptive potential. The loss of genetic diversity due to the founder effect can be minimized by ensuring that the founder population is large enough and genetically representative of the wild population. This is often difficult because removing large numbers of individuals from the wild populations may further reduce the genetic diversity of a species that is already of conservation concern. An alternative to this is collecting sperm from wild individuals and using this via artificial insemination to bring in fresh genetic material. Maximizing the captive population size and the effective population size can decrease the loss of genetic diversity by minimizing the random loss of alleles due to genetic drift . Minimizing the number of generations in captivity is another effective method for reducing the loss of genetic diversity in captive populations.