Northern quollELLA KELLYAttempts to save animals from extinction often include relocating them to zoos or another location safe from threats. But a study published in Biology Letters today (June 6) suggests that this isolation could have unintended consequences. The authors found that after just 13 generations, northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus)—small, carnivorous marsupials native to Australia—sequestered on an island without predators no longer avoid predators’ scents as do their counterparts on the mainland that coexist with predators. This could make the animals more susceptible to predation when they are reintroduced to habitats with predators.
“This [paper] is really important because one of the challenges in much of the world—and especially in Australia—is trying to reintroduce species to places with either . . . predators or novel predators from populations that weren’t exposed to predators. Many of these reintroductions or translocations fail,” says Dan Blumstein, who studies the evolution of behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, and did not participate in the work. “What this shows pretty convincingly is that the complete loss of all predators for relatively few number of generations of captivity leads to the loss of predator discrimination abilities.”
Northern quolls are about the size of a six-week-old kitten and look a bit like mice with white spots and furry tales. Their numbers have plummeted ...
