Habitat fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay.^[2] Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment^[3] (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation^[3]), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species. More specifically, habitat fragmentation is a process by which large and contiguous habitats get divided into smaller, isolated patches of habitats.^[4][5]