  Our paper computationally explores the extinction dynamics of an animal
species effected by a sudden spike in mortality due to an extreme event. In our
study, the animal species has a 2-year life cycle and is endowed with a high
survival probability under normal circumstances. Our proposed approach does not
involve any restraining assumptions concerning environmental variables or
predator-prey relationships. Rather it is based on the simple premise that if
observed on an year-to-year basis, the population size will be noted to either
have gone up or come down as compared to last year. The conceptualization is
borrowed from the theory of asset pricing in stochastic finance. Our results
indicate that an extreme event with a maximum shock size (i.e. the maximum
number of immediate mortalities that may be caused by an extreme event)
exceeding two-thirds the size of the pristine population can potentially drive
any animal species with a 2-year life cycle to extinction for any fecundity
level.
