POPULATION AND THE CONCEPT OF SPECIES

The population is not only an ecological unit. It ensures and, at the same time, conditions the genetic stability of any species and determines the occurrence of evolutional changes which, in time, may be included in the genome of the species. This process takes place at the level of all the populations of the species. Every population lives in certain types of biocenoses which populate certain types of ecosystems. To understand the role of the population, the following questions must be answered: the form in which the species occurs in nature, where the populations of a certain species occur and which features determine this occurrence, what function the populations of a species fulfill where they occur, and what ecological characteristics/peculiarities appear in the populations in the places where they occur.