Humans alone were responsible for the demise of Australia's iconic extinct native predator, the Tasmanian Tiger or thylacine, a new study led by the University of Adelaide has concluded.
Using a new population modelling approach, the study contradicts the widespread belief that disease must have been a factor in the thylacine's extinction.
The thylacine was a unique marsupial carnivore found throughout most of Tasmania before European settlement in 1803. Between 1886 and 1909, the Tasmanian government encouraged people to hunt thylacines and paid bounties on over 2000 thylacine carcasses. Only a handful of animals were located after the bounty was lifted and the last known thylacine was captured from the wild in 1933.
"Many people, however, believe that bounty hunting alone could not have driven the thylacine extinct and therefore claim that an unknown disease epidemic must have been responsible," says the project leader, Research Associate Dr Thomas Prowse, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Environment Institute.
"We tested this claim by developing a 'metamodel' a network of linked species models that evaluated whether the combined impacts of Europeans could have exterminated the thylacine, without any disease."
The mathematical models used by conservation biologists to simulate the fate of threatened species under different management strategies (called population viability analysis or PVA) traditionally neglect important interactions between species. The researchers designed a new approach to PVA that included species interactions.
"The new model simulated the directs effects of bounty hunting and habitat loss and, importantly, also considered the indirect effects of a reduction in the thylacine's prey (kangaroos and wallabies) due to human harvesting and competition from millions of introduced sheep," Dr Prowse says.
"We found we could simulate the thylacine extinction, includ
'/>"/>
| Contact: Dr. Thomas Prowse thomas.prowse@adelaide.edu.au 61-431-480-729 University of Adelaide Source:Eurekalert |
Related biology news :
1. Parkinsons disease stopped in animal model
2. Disease-carrying colonizers on the move: Predicting the spread of ticks across Canada
3. U of Alberta researcher steps closer to understand autoimmune diseases
4. Common North American frog identified as carrier of deadly amphibian disease
5. New insight into mechanisms behind autoimmune diseases suggests a potential therapy
6. Genetic research develops tools for studying diseases, improving regenerative treatment
7. Researchers discover novel therapy for Crohns disease
8. New hope for treating Alzheimers Disease: A role for the FKBP52 protein
9. Low-calorie diet may be harmful for bowel disease patients
10. Key to immune system disease could lie inside the cheek
11. Cell therapy using patients own bone marrow may present option for heart disease
| Copyright © 2003-2012 Bio-Medicine. All rights reserved. ABOUT | CONTACT US | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS AND CONDITIONS |  |