Would it be good to introduce related or similar species to fill the ecological niche of extinct species?
This is an excellent question, but such a plan would need to be approached with extreme caution and lots of research to ensure that the introduced relative would fit into its new ecosystem. At best it would simply fail to adapt and die out, but at worst it could be too successful and cause irreparable damage to other species that belong in that ecosystem. I’d be hesitant to introduce an ecologically similar but distantly related species, because its different evolutionary history increases the likelihood that it would either fail to adapt or become too successful. What I think would be particularly interesting would be to observe the changes in the introduced population as it responds to selective pressures similar to those that originally produced the extinct species/subspecies. Would it eventually become superficially indistinguishable from its lost cousin, or would genetic drift and environmental change cause its evolution to take a different path?
