Since Amur leopards are the rarest cat on Earth, scientists need to know how well the Amur leopard's health is, just in case there's medical health issue that concern with the endangering. So, in 2007, a team of scientists "captured" an Amur leopard for a quick health check. Scientists gathered detailed information with blood analysis, electrocardiogram, and weight measurements. When the medical health data was taken and recorded, the scientists released the female Amur leopard back into the wild, unharmed.
Ever since, scientists are evaluating the information they collected, trying to insure the leopard's health and look for any signs of breeding.
This is something irregular the scientists found:
Health analysis of three Amur leopards revealed that all had significant heart murmurs—a condition that reflects a possible underlying genetic disorder within the small population. If inbreeding is determined to be a problem for the Amur leopard population, conservationists might consider trans-locating leopards from other regions to increase the genetic diversity of this rare subspecies.
Genetic diversity in the wild Amur tiger population:
During the early 20th Century, the Amur tiger was almost driven to extinction. Expanding human settlements, logging and poaching forced the tiger out of 90% of its range. By the 1940s, there were only 20 to 30 Amur tigers in the wild, creating a ‘genetic bottleneck’.
Samples from 15 wild Amur tigers were analysed by a team of Russian, Spanish and German scientists. The aim was to find out how genetically diverse the wild population was and whether the 1940s severe population bottleneck had had a significant effect.
The samples were screened for certain genetic ‘markers’. The ‘markers’ are points in the DNA code which show whether the parents were very related to each other or whether they were genetically different. The evidence from the analysis pointed towards a bottleneck in recent history, the 1940s crisis, had had a severe effect on the variety of genes in the gene pool.
"Our results are the first to demonstrate a quite recent genetic bottleneck in Siberian tigers, a result that matches the well-documented severe demographic decline of the Siberian tiger population in the 1940s," the researchers wrote in the paper.
More than 70 years later, the Amur tiger population has not recovered from this event, however there is still hope. The Zoological Society of London administers a carefully managed breeding programme which ensures that the captive-bred tigers are retaining over 90% of their genetic diversity. This captive population serves as a gene reserve if a tragedy occurs in the wild.
Since Amur leopards are so rare, scientists are trying hard to keep the population going. During the time of early twentieth century, people realized that Amur leopards were almost never spotted, which resulted in almost extinction. Ever since, people from Amur leopard conservations such as ALTA (Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have made projects to help the Amur leopards recover from extinction, and someday thrive. Some projects include reducing threats such as poaching, forest fires, inbreeding, and physical development. ALTA established an anti-poaching team and carefully observed the livestock of Amur leopards to see where they live and how they hunt. Other ways these conservation kept tracked of Amur leopards were with cameras and snow track counts. Every year, they would tally up the sightings of an Amur leopard and see if the numbers are improving or decreasing. Fire fighters were also specially put in to stop fires burning in the habitat area of Amur leopards. If Amur leopards were found sick, ZSL vests would do health checks and feed medicine to them. Breeding was also encouraged. From all the hard work and effort these conservation groups putting in, Amur leopards are insured a chance of thriving in the future.
 |
| Aw... SO cute!!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment