Post by youcantry on May 27, 2009 14:58:37 GMT 10
Just found a lengthy piece that has the following quote from Dr Jeremy Austin at Adelaide:
"It’s not easy material to work with, but the Tasmanian devil material from the mainland is showing less genetic diversity than we had expected, which suggests the species underwent some population bottleneck a long time ago, before something similar happened in the surviving population in Tasmania. "
Which is interesting - because I believe that the DNA work done on the mainland devil specimens at Museum Victoria showed them to be not significantly distinct from Tasmanian specimens. One explanation for that result would be of course that the mainland specimens were imported from Tasmania, post European-colonisation - whether inadvertently or not, and whether or not the recovered specimens were the original imports or their descendants.
But this new piece suggests that even pre mainland "extinction", the devil's genetics were not dissimilar from that of Tasmanian devils. That doesn't strengthen any case for arguing the mainland specimens are remnant mainland population, but it does take a bit of wind out of the sails of the explanation that they were almost certainly Tasmanian stock.
There is plenty, plenty more in the source article, here: www.biotechnews.com.au/article/304678/digging_up_dna
... and no doubt we'll be having quite a number of discussions on this one! (Kick off a new thread here per topic, eh?)
Chris.
"It’s not easy material to work with, but the Tasmanian devil material from the mainland is showing less genetic diversity than we had expected, which suggests the species underwent some population bottleneck a long time ago, before something similar happened in the surviving population in Tasmania. "
Which is interesting - because I believe that the DNA work done on the mainland devil specimens at Museum Victoria showed them to be not significantly distinct from Tasmanian specimens. One explanation for that result would be of course that the mainland specimens were imported from Tasmania, post European-colonisation - whether inadvertently or not, and whether or not the recovered specimens were the original imports or their descendants.
But this new piece suggests that even pre mainland "extinction", the devil's genetics were not dissimilar from that of Tasmanian devils. That doesn't strengthen any case for arguing the mainland specimens are remnant mainland population, but it does take a bit of wind out of the sails of the explanation that they were almost certainly Tasmanian stock.
There is plenty, plenty more in the source article, here: www.biotechnews.com.au/article/304678/digging_up_dna
... and no doubt we'll be having quite a number of discussions on this one! (Kick off a new thread here per topic, eh?)
Chris.