Project to Save Endangered Tasmanian Devil

Dr Austin and colleagues from SA Zoos and the Tasmanian Government will spend the next three years establishing a conservation program and working to suppress the infectious cancer, devil facial tumour disease, which is ravaging Australia’s largest living marsupial carnivore.

The Tasmanian devil is not only a key tourism icon for Australia’s most southern State, but also ecologically critical to Tasmania’s native ecosystem.

“Extinction of the species is a possibility within the next two decades unless disease spread can be stopped,” says Dr Austin.

Because Tasmanian devils have extremely low levels of genetic diversity and a chromosomal mutation unique among carnivorous mammals, they are more prone to the infectious cancer. Dr Austin’s team will analyse genetic material from devil populations to understand the origin, spread and impact of the disease and try to find a vaccine.

“We need to establish whether the low levels of genetic diversity are due to recent human impacts or a long-term historical pattern. We also need to look at how the cancer is affecting surviving populations and identify individuals that may be resistant to the disease.”

Tasmanian devils became extinct on the Australian mainland at least 400 years ago and are now found only in Tasmania. Unlike Tasmanian tigers, devils survived initial human impacts following European colonisation but in the past decade their numbers have fallen drastically.

“We have lost over half our devils in the past 10 years, with an estimated population of 20,000 to 50,000 mature devils left. Extinction within the next 20 years is a real possibility unless we find a vaccine, eradicate the disease and establish captive colonies,” Dr Austin says.

Devil facial tumour disease is one of only two known clonally transmissible cancers and appears to have originated from a genetic change of mutation in a single individual. It is spread through biting, without any evidence of recovery or resistance to the disease.

The project, which has received $168,000 from the Federal Government, combines ancient DNA methods and modern genetic procedures to examine the impact of the disease on Tasmanian devils.

Dr Jeremy Austin, ARC Senior Research Associate
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Adelaide
Business: +61 8 8303 4557
Mobile: +61 0404 198 493

Media Contact

Dr Jeremy Austin Newswise Science News

More Information:

http://www.adelaide.edu

All latest news from the category: Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

This complex theme deals primarily with interactions between organisms and the environmental factors that impact them, but to a greater extent between individual inanimate environmental factors.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles on topics such as climate protection, landscape conservation, ecological systems, wildlife and nature parks and ecosystem efficiency and balance.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Bringing bio-inspired robots to life

Nebraska researcher Eric Markvicka gets NSF CAREER Award to pursue manufacture of novel materials for soft robotics and stretchable electronics. Engineers are increasingly eager to develop robots that mimic the…

Bella moths use poison to attract mates

Scientists are closer to finding out how. Pyrrolizidine alkaloids are as bitter and toxic as they are hard to pronounce. They’re produced by several different types of plants and are…

AI tool creates ‘synthetic’ images of cells

…for enhanced microscopy analysis. Observing individual cells through microscopes can reveal a range of important cell biological phenomena that frequently play a role in human diseases, but the process of…

Partners & Sponsors