Minimum viable population limitations ignore evolutionary history.

Flather et al. [1] argue convincingly that calls to incorporate a median minimum viable population (MVP) size of 5000 individuals into considerations of conservation funding [2] should be ignored. This is especially important given the apparent biases within the data set used to develop the median MVP on which the policy advice was based [3]. First, the data set is biased towards publications in which MVP is explicit. Selection for inclusion in the database was largely based on the search terms “minimum & viable” and “extinction”.