Some 250,000 tortoises were snatched from the Galapagos, Caccone said. “They were well known as major destinations for whalers,” Gibbs said of the arid islands. Humans would disembark and retrieve saddleback tortoises on low-elevation islands, which were smaller and more accessible than the domed variety. These people used tortoises as a long-lasting fresh food source, especially since the animals could survive on ships for months without food or water. How did they end up near the remote Wolf Volcano? Likely because of the eating habits of whalers, pirates and other seamen of the 1800s, researchers said. Some of them are the offspring of purebred, extinct tortoises. In recent years, researchers discovered the hybrid population of tortoises living at Wolf Volcano, far from the Pinta and Floreana islands. Gibbs described the creatures as “bulldozers” and a “major ecological force.” While Galapagos tortoises are iconic figures in the realm of conservation, these particular species maintained the balance of vegetation on the islands by consuming massive quantities of plant life, Caccone said. “Darwin was practically the last person who wrote about the tortoises on Floreana,” Gibbs said. The last known living Pinta tortoise died in 2012 his name was Lonesome George. The hybrids share genomes with two tortoise species: the Floreana tortoise, or Chelonoidis elephantopus, that went extinct about 150 years ago and the Pinta tortoise, or Chelonoidis abingdonii. But we’re talking about recovering the remnants of the original species.” “The whole process of population restoration is fairly common. “There’s not really even terminology for basically rescuing the genomes of two extinct species using surviving hybrids,” said James Gibbs, a professor of conservation biology at State University of New York in Syracuse. The tortoises now reside in a Santa Cruz breeding center, as part of a project spearheaded by the Galapagos National Park Directorate and Galapagos Conservancy. Last month, park rangers and scientists removed 32 hybrid tortoises from Wolf Volcano in a complex operation that involved airlifting creatures from rugged terrain. This genome of the extinct species locked in a place that was remote enough for humans not to go there.” “It’s just a strange accident of history. “This a peculiar case I don’t think you can extend this example to many other species,” said Adalgisa Caccone, a senior research scientist at Yale University. Upon the very islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the theory of natural selection, an international team of scientists and conservationists has undertaken a first-of-its-kind effort to revive two extinct tortoise species - not using high-tech genetic engineering, but by breeding living creatures related to the ones now gone. But thanks to an odd set of circumstances off the Galapagos Islands involving rugged geography and whalers with hearty appetites, humanity has a chance to bring back what it once obliterated. Few things feel as final in the natural world as a species going extinct.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |