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According to a new study, turtle refugees with the highest genetic variation are much more likely to survive conservation translocation than turtles whose genetic diversity is lower. The results suggest that translocation efforts should take into account genetic variation when selecting target individuals rather than focusing solely on those determined to be more geographically or genetically similar to the target populations. Human activity and climate change are driving a record number of species to extinction and represent a challenge faced by a myriad of conservation efforts around the world. One conservation strategy employed to preserve threatened species is the relocation of individual plants and animals to areas where they have become extinct locally or to new locations where they could support declining resident populations. Although the approach is becoming more and more common, it is often reserved as a last resort as long-term success is often quite poor. An ongoing debate in this area is whether such efforts are most successful when targeting individuals from environmentally similar regions or genetically close target populations, or when they focus on overall genetic diversity. To test these hypotheses, Peter Scott and colleagues used a long-term dataset of displaced Mojave Desert turtles – many previously captive pets – brought to the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center’s translocation site in Nevada. Scott et al. analyzed genomic data for 166 desert tortoise refugees who survived or died over a twenty-year period and found that neither geographic distance nor genetic similarity had any effect on post-translocation survival. Instead, the biggest predictor of success was heterozygosity: individuals with the highest genomic variation survived at much higher rates than others. While the authors note that more research is needed to understand the reasons behind this increased survival, the new insights suggest ways to improve current translocation efforts.
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