#or to create artificial genetic diversity in a species with a dwindling population

[weirderscience]

doodle of some first generation style genelines that prioritized style over function. you can still see these patterns emerge in the modern era, and its not unheard of for well preserved citadels to still have the technology to make designer babies like this. however a lot of loamcats find it impractical, wasteful, and sacrilegious (or adjacent) to use the technology for something so surface-level

[citizentruth-blog]

Can Human Fertility Techniques Bring Back Endangered Animals? - ENVIRONMENT

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/can-human-fertility-techniques-bring-back-endangered-animals/

Can Human Fertility Techniques Bring Back Endangered Animals?

Dear EarthTalk: Can fertility techniques pioneered for humans or other animals be used to try to bring back endangered wildlife species? — James E., Richmond, VA

(EarthTalk® From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine) 

No doubt, humans have come a long way in engineering medical solutions to our own fertility problems. The most common techniques to help people have babies today include: using medication to stimulate unresponsive ovaries to develop mature eggs; artificial insemination whereby healthy sperm is placed directly into a woman’s uterus and conception happens normally thereafter, and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), which entails combining eggs and sperm outside the body and then inserting one of the resulting fertilized embryos (so-called “test tube babies”) into the woman’s uterine cavity and letting the rest of the pregnancy proceed to term naturally.

While such techniques have helped millions of couples around the world bear healthy babies, only recently have scientists applied such techniques to bringing endangered wildlife species back from the brink of extinction. “The genetics of human fertility can give a better understanding of fertility in more exotic species,” reports Dr. Sherman Silber, a pioneering human fertility expert at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, Missouri who has had success applying the lessons learned on humans to animals.

To date, Silber and his colleagues have helped a half dozen leading U.S. zoos maintain healthy populations of chimpanzees, gorillas, South American bush dogs, Mexican wolves, orangutans and Mongolian wild horses using surgical techniques, artificial insemination, IVF and gestational surrogacy (whereby another female besides the genetic mother carries the pregnancy to term).

“We have frozen ovaries in animals that are destined to die off for later ovary transplantation back to related species to be able to increase their population,” reports Silber, who has of late been ramping up efforts to bring back dwindling populations of still-wild endangered species.

Another leading light in the field is Thomas Hildebrandt, who heads the reproduction management program for Berlin’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and is well known among wildlife veterinarians for his pioneering work in endangered species insemination. Hildebrandt, who helped conceive upwards of 50 endangered elephant calves by artificially inseminating their mothers is now focusing his attention on trying to rescue the Northern White Rhino using IVF techniques. Rampant poaching in the 1970s and 1980s and surging demand in Asia for rhino horns decimated the animal’s populations in Africa—only two individuals, Fatu and Najin (both female and incapable of carrying babies due to health complications) remain alive today; the last male, Sudan, died in March 2018.

Now Hildebrandt and colleagues want to bring them back. They froze the sperm from Sudan and four other males before they died and hope to combine it with eggs harvested from Fatu and Najin while using less endangered but genetically similar Southern White Rhino females as pregnancy surrogates. While this “baby step” won’t be enough to achieve the genetic diversity required to create a sustainable long-term population, Hildebrandt hopes it can open funders’ eyes to the possibility of actually reviving populations of Northern White Rhinos and other species through stem cell research and other techniques researchers haven’t even dreamed up yet.

CONTACTS: “Infertility Treatment for Endangered or Near Extinct Species,” www.infertile.com/infertility-treatment-endangered-near-extinct-species/; Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, www.izw-berlin.de/welcome.html.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of the nonprofit EarthTalk. To donate, visit www.earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

After No Mate Found On Tinder, Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies in Kenya

[newsvomit-blog]

Scientists hatch bold plan to save polar bears

For the past two decades, scientists have been monitoring the effects of a warming Arctic on the world’s polar bears — and the bears’ future has looked increasingly bleak.The latest estimates suggest that Arctic sea ice is disappearing by 14 percent a decade, drastically limiting the bears’ ability to hunt the seals on which they feed.And research on bears living on the Arctic islands of Svalbard shows that the animals are now reproducing at a rate one-fifth of that seen just 20 years ago.Given these dismal statistics, scientists now predict that the global population of polar bears could fall from 20,000 to 30,000 today to fewer than 5,000 by 2100 — and beyond that no one knows.Even if a small population of bears manage to hang on, they’re not out of the woods.“One of the problems when population levels in a species get this low is that you start to get an increased likelihood of genetic disorders due to inbreeding,” says University of Alberta biologist Andrew Derocher.Luckily for the bears and the humans who love them, Derocher and a cadre of fellow scientists are developing a complex set of strategies to save the animals.

It’s an audacious plan, encompassing everything from providing extra food for the bears to turning female grizzly bears into surrogate moms for their white-coated cousins.But it may be all that stands between the bears and oblivion.Polar bears can now be found across the Arctic Circle from Alaska to Russia.But as the planet heats up and sea ice melts, the animals’ range will shrink along with their population.(Some people have suggested replacing lost sea ice with artificial floes, but this would be unlikely to work because algae — the basis of the entire food chain that ultimately provides seals for the bears — grows only on real ice.) Ultimately, the only polar bears to survive in the wild may be the ones living in the Norwegian bay region of the Canadian archipelago.“This region is expected to be one of the last bastions of Arctic sea ice,” says Steven Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears International, a conservation group in Bozeman, Montana.

“With the right planning and strategies, we can help polar bears remain there as long as possible.”For 5,000 bears to survive in this region (the minimum thought to be required to prevent inbreeding), scientists believe the animals may need help from humans.Derocher envisions helicopters zipping around the region, dropping bear chow.Without such deliveries, he says, hungry bears might wander south into human settlements — and risk being shot.Airdrops of bear chow wouldn’t come cheap.

Derocher estimates that delivering enough chow to sustain those 5,000 bears could cost the Canadian government $2 million a month.Given the hefty price tag, he proposes that the chow be used only during times when the bears are finding it especially difficult to catch and kill seals.The Norwegian bay polar bears are genetically unique.If they’re the only bears to survive in the wild, they may lack the genetic diversity needed to stay healthy over the long term.

“If you don’t have a diverse population, you run the risk of animals not having the adaptability to deal with a disease, for example,” Derocher says.To address this problem, Derocher and his fellow scientists think it might be necessary to relocate polar bears from other parts of the Arctic to the Norwegian bay region.The animals would be shot with tranquilizer darts and then transported north by aircraft for release.“You’d mainly be looking at relocating juveniles, as the problem with shifting adult polar bears is that they immediately want to go back where they came from,” Derocher says.“You’d also look to initially ensure there’s lots of food resources, perhaps through deposits of bear chow, to make them keen to stay there long term.”Another possibility would be to keep a diverse population of polar bears in zoos and then reintroduce the captive animals into the wild if they’re needed to sustain a dwindling population.

“Once the planet starts to cool again in hundreds or thousands of years, and sea ice reforms, you would have a nucleus of bears which you could then allow to recolonize the areas they formally occupied,” Derocher says.If the population of polar bears in the wild drops precipitously, scientists may seek help from grizzly bears, which are genetically similar to polar bears but well adapted to survive on an increasingly hot planet.Derocher thinks we could freeze polar bear sperm and eggs and use them, if necessary, to create embryos that would be transplanted into female grizzlies.“We know this would be quite viable, but that’s probably a scenario we’re only looking at if we see a catastrophic decline in the species in the second half of this century,” he says.But Amstrup warns that unless we find ways to mitigate the ongoing warming of the Arctic, the species will cease to exist in the wild even if we turn to assisted reproduction.“If human-driven climate change continues unabated, the last ice areas will ultimately disappear, and the remaining wild bears with them,” he says.“There’s no future for polar bears in an Arctic without the sea ice which enables them to hunt and form the dens where they raise their cubs.

From then on, the species will only exist in zoos.”FOLLOW MACH ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND INSTAGRAM.Source: NBC News.

Scientists hatch bold plan to save polar bears was originally published on NewsVomit