Adding wild birds to the captive colonies, located in Pakistan and India, is crucial, but political and logistical barriers are hampering efforts, says lead author Jeff A. Johnson.
The study was published online August 15 in the journal Biological Conservation.
With a seven-foot wingspan, the oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis) was an awesome presence in south Asia until the mid-1990s, when populations began to collapse. At first the cause was unclear, but researchers eventually zeroed in on an anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac, that is used to alleviate arthritis-like symptoms in livestock but is toxic to vultures. Vultures that feed on carcasses of animals treated with the drug die of kidney failure within a day or two after eating the tainted meat. And although India, Nepal and Pakistan outlawed its manufacture in 2006, diclofenac is still available, and birds are still dying.
While the death of an unattractive bird that scavenges for a living may not sound like a great loss, vultures have important cultural and religious significance in south Asia. The ancient Parsi religion holds earth, fire and water sacred, and to avoid contaminating them, the Parsis dispose of their dead by placing them on "Towers of Silence," where vultures consume the remains. In addition, the vulture saint Jatayu is an important figure in Hindu religion. The absence of vultures poses a direct threat to public health as well, as uneaten livestock carcasses provide breeding grounds for bacteria and attract feral dogs, which may spread rabies and other diseases.
When any large population crashes, as the vultures have, the amount of genetic diversity in the population also is likely to dwindle. This is a concern, Johnson said, because a population's genetic diversity reflects its ability to adapt to environmental challenges such as changing climate or outbreaks of disease. Without the ability to adapt, populations and whole species may become extinct.
Johnson and coworkers used museum specimens collected before the decline began, along with recent feather and tissue samples from birds in Pakistan's last remaining wild breeding colony, to see how genetic diversity in the wild population has changed as the population has plummeted. Then, assuming captive populations of various sizes, they used computer simulations to determine how large captive populations must be to preserve genetic diversity.
The analysis showed that while there was still a fair amount of genetic diversity in the wild population two years ago when their last samples were obtained, current captive populations are not large enough to maintain that diversity if the wild populations are wiped out---a fate that seems inevitable if people keep using diclofenac. The simulation results also suggest that levels of genetic diversity in the wild may already be in decline.
"We know the problem, and we know the solution," said Johnson, who was an assistant research scientist at U-M when the research was done and recently accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of North Texas in Denton. "We just need to get diclofenac out of the environment and more birds into protection before it is too late."
The Peregrine Fund, a organization that works to conserve birds of prey in nature, is trying to prevent the birds' extinction, but it's an effort that requires money and international cooperation, both of which can be problematic in the vultures' home countries.
"One of my goals with this paper," Johnson said, "is to raise awareness of the problem and to increase political will in India and Pakistan to get this matter resolved."
Johnson's coauthors on the Biological Conservation paper are Martin Gilbert of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Munir Virani and Muhammad Asim of the Peregrine Fund, and former U-M professor of ecology and evolutionary biology David Mindell, now at the California Academy of Sciences. The researchers received funding from The Peregrine Fund.
For more information:
Biological Conservation paper: "Temporal genetic analysis of the critically endangered oriental white-backed vulture in Pakistan": http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.001
U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: http://www.eeb.lsa.umich.edu/eeb/
The Peregrine Fund report on the Asian vulture crisis: http://www.peregrinefund.org/conserve_category.asp?category=Asian%20Vulture%20Crisis
The Peregrine Fund update on the Asian vulture population project: http://www.peregrinefund.org/vulture/
The Peregrine Fund Asian vulture fact sheet: http://www.peregrinefund.org/vulture_factsheet.asp
Vulture Rescue: http://www.vulturerescue.org/
Nancy Ross-Flanigan | Newswise Science News
Upcycling of PET Bottles: New Ideas for Resource Cycles in Germany
25.06.2018 | Fraunhofer-Institut für Betriebsfestigkeit und Systemzuverlässigkeit LBF
Dry landscapes can increase disease transmission
20.06.2018 | Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V.
A new manufacturing technique uses a process similar to newspaper printing to form smoother and more flexible metals for making ultrafast electronic devices.
The low-cost process, developed by Purdue University researchers, combines tools already used in industry for manufacturing metals on a large scale, but uses...
For the first time ever, scientists have determined the cosmic origin of highest-energy neutrinos. A research group led by IceCube scientist Elisa Resconi, spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Center SFB1258 at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), provides an important piece of evidence that the particles detected by the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole originate from a galaxy four billion light-years away from Earth.
To rule out other origins with certainty, the team led by neutrino physicist Elisa Resconi from the Technical University of Munich and multi-wavelength...
For the first time a team of researchers have discovered two different phases of magnetic skyrmions in a single material. Physicists of the Technical Universities of Munich and Dresden and the University of Cologne can now better study and understand the properties of these magnetic structures, which are important for both basic research and applications.
Whirlpools are an everyday experience in a bath tub: When the water is drained a circular vortex is formed. Typically, such whirls are rather stable. Similar...
Physicists working with Roland Wester at the University of Innsbruck have investigated if and how chemical reactions can be influenced by targeted vibrational excitation of the reactants. They were able to demonstrate that excitation with a laser beam does not affect the efficiency of a chemical exchange reaction and that the excited molecular group acts only as a spectator in the reaction.
A frequently used reaction in organic chemistry is nucleophilic substitution. It plays, for example, an important role in in the synthesis of new chemical...
Optical spectroscopy allows investigating the energy structure and dynamic properties of complex quantum systems. Researchers from the University of Würzburg present two new approaches of coherent two-dimensional spectroscopy.
"Put an excitation into the system and observe how it evolves." According to physicist Professor Tobias Brixner, this is the credo of optical spectroscopy....
13.07.2018 | Event News
12.07.2018 | Event News
03.07.2018 | Event News
20.07.2018 | Power and Electrical Engineering
20.07.2018 | Information Technology
20.07.2018 | Materials Sciences