“Normally, if you have a predator-predator relationship, the prey will not go away because they are interdependent,” said Moseby. As it was, “the cats and foxes grew exponentially.” Creatures like the smallest bilby and the desert bandicoot had no chance because it happened very quickly. ”
It is the hope that inspires Moseby’s work that if given the opportunity, that is to say more time, that species will be able to transform into introduced predators. The results so far have provided some reassurance, but have also been difficult to explain.
In one experiment, Moseby and her colleagues let five cats into a fenced-in plot with a few hundred larger bilbies and left them there for two years. They would then capture some of the remaining bills as well as some bills from a “no predator” block and attach radio broadcasters to their tails. Both groups of lips with radio tags were moved to another paddle with more cats. After 40 days, only a quarter of “naïve” bilbies were still alive. In contrast, two-thirds of bilbies were “open to predator” avoidance of predation. This showed that the bilbies exposed to cats had better survival skills. But whether these skills were learned or whether or not to opt for bilbies with more genes was cat – saving – it was not yet clear.
At the same time, bettongs that were open to cats for 18 months showed changes in behavior that suggested they would become more predatory; for example, they went to food that was left out more slowly. Again, however, it was difficult to know what marked these changes.
“The equipment is there, but there is a question: How fast can it happen? Moseby said. “People say to me, ‘Oh, this could take a hundred years. ‘And I’m saying,’ Yeah, it could take a hundred years. What else are you doing? ‘ I may not live to see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. ”
Moseby is “the most innovative conservation scientist alive, as far as I’m concerned,” said Daniel Blumstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. who has collaborated with her on several research papers. . “She’s just so creative.”
Moseby’s is one of a growing number of conservation projects underway from the foundation is no longer enough to protect species from change. Man must intervene help changing species.
More than 1,000 miles northeast of Arid Recovery, at the Australian Marine Science Institute’s National Marine Simulator, near the city of Townsville, researchers are working to produce corals that survive warmer temperatures. The effort involves crossing corals from the center of the Great Barrier reef, where the water is colder, with corals from the north side of the reef, where it is warmer. The children of these crosses are then under the pressure of heat in the laboratory of the Sea Simulator. The hope is that some of them will be better off withstanding higher temperatures than either of their parents. As part of this effort, researchers are also applying heat stress to generations of coral reefs, in an effort to select for harder species. (The symbionts – tiny algae from the genus Symbiodinium– Provide corals with much of the food they need to build reefs.) This method was called “assisted evolution”.
When I visited the so – called SeaSim, it was coral spawning time and there was a dock post with the name Kate Quigley above the crosses. “We’re really looking for the best,” she told me.
Like bilbies and bettongs, corals are already under strong selective pressure. As the oceans warm, those who can’t take in the heat die, and those who can keep going. . “Help” corals in the process of evolution. They note that, during their annual spawning, the corals themselves achieve millions upon millions of crosses; if some of the fruits of these unions are particularly hardy, they will go on to produce more corals, and will grow on their own.