{"id":6646,"date":"2021-11-23T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6646"},"modified":"2021-11-23T00:00:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T00:00:15","slug":"poaching-is-altering-the-genetics-of-wild-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6646","title":{"rendered":"Poaching is altering the genetics of wild animals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“just as tusks evolved because they provide a number of benefits, a striking new study<\/a> shows that somepopulations of African elephants have rapidly evolved to become tusk\u2013less. <\/em>Published in the journal Science, <\/em>the paper\u2019s authors found that many elephants in a park in Mozambique, which were heavily hunted for their ivory during a civil war a few decades ago, have lost their tusks \u2014 presumably because tuskless elephants are more likely to survive and pass the trait on to their offspring.”
…
“In theory, it\u2019s advantageousto be born without tusks in areas where poachers are active, Hendry said. But tusklessness also has its downsides. Elephants need their tusks to dig, lift objects, and defend themselves. The hulking incisors are not useless appendages.
The genes that seem to make female elephants tuskless also appear to prevent mothers from giving birth to male calves \u2014 that\u2019s why all the tuskless elephants in the park are female, Pringle said. (Some mothers did give birth to males with<\/em> tusks, who likely didn\u2019t inherit the gene.) Over time, a shift in the sex of elephants could have consequences for population growth.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also potential costs to African grasslands, which are among the rarest and most biodiverse ecosystems<\/a> on Earth, the study authors write. By turning over soil in search of food and minerals and gouging trees with their tusks, African savanna elephants prevent forests from growing too denseand help maintain grasslands. That\u2019s why they\u2019re considered \u201cengineers<\/a>\u201d of the ecosystem. If they lose their tusks, a whole web of plants and animals may feel the impact.\u201cThis evolutionary change could have massive cascading ecological influences,\u201d Hendry said.”  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/down-to-earth\/22735163\/elephant-tusks-genetics-evolution-adaptation-hunting<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“just as tusks evolved because they provide a number of benefits, a striking new study shows that some populations of African elephants have rapidly evolved to become tusk\u2013less. Published in the journal Science, the paper\u2019s authors found that many elephants in a park in Mozambique, which were heavily hunted for their ivory during a civil war a few decades ago, have lost their tusks \u2014 presumably because tuskless elephants are more likely to survive and pass the trait on to their offspring.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“In theory, it\u2019s advantageous to be born without tusks in areas where poachers are active, Hendry said. But tusklessness also has its downsides. Elephants need their tusks to dig, lift objects, and defend themselves. The hulking incisors are not useless appendages.<\/p>\n

The genes that seem to make female elephants tuskless also appear to prevent mothers from giving birth to male calves \u2014 that\u2019s why all the tuskless elephants in the park are female, Pringle said. (Some mothers did give birth to males with tusks, who likely didn\u2019t inherit the gene.) Over time, a shift in the sex of elephants could have consequences for population growth.<\/p>\n

There are also potential costs to African grasslands, which are among the rarest and most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, the study authors write. By turning over soil in search of food and minerals and gouging trees with their tusks, African savanna elephants prevent forests from growing too dense and help maintain grasslands. That\u2019s why they\u2019re considered \u201cengineers\u201d of the ecosystem. If they lose their tusks, a whole web of plants and animals may feel the impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis evolutionary change could have massive cascading ecological influences,\u201d Hendry said.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1452,417,1453,1451,1450],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-adoption","tag-africa","tag-elephants","tag-evolution","tag-poaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6647,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions\/6647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}