Pangolins are threatened placental mammals distributed in Africa and Asia. Many efforts have been undertaken in the last century to maintain pangolins in captivity, but only a few of them succeeded in maintaining and keeping this species in a controlled environment. This study reports the first systematic breeding of the Critically Endangered Malayan pangolin (Manis javanica) in captivity. Our captive breeding approach successfully improved the reproductive rate for both wild and captive-born female pangolins. From 2016 to 2020, we had 33 wild pangolins and produced 49 captive-born offspring spanning three filial generations. The female offspring further bred 18 offspring, of which 14 (78%) were conceived during the first time of cohabitation with males, and four offspring were conceived during the second cohabitation event, suggesting that they may practice copulation-induced ovulation. We observed that captive-born female pangolins could reach sexual maturity at 7–9 months (n = 4), and male pangolins could mate and successfully fertilise females at nine months age (n = 1). We also observed a female pangolin conceiving on the eighth day after parturition (the fifth day after the death of its pup). Our captive pangolins had a female-biased sex ratio of 1:0.5 at birth, unlike other known captive-born mammals. Also, captive-born pangolins were generally more viable after successful weaning and had a similar gestation length (~185 days) to wild pangolins. Most importantly, we report the first self-sustaining captive population of Malayan pangolins, and this species has an efficient reproduction strategy. These advances provide more comprehensive information for people to understand pangolins, and have implications for conserving endangered Malayan pangolins and providing scientific guidance to the management of other pangolin species.
Lizards prefer certain habitat in terms of their morphological traits. Lizard abundance is an important indicator of their habitat suitability. Besides, foraging and basking are important behaviors for lizards, which largely depend on the habitat types. Psammodromus (Psammodromus algirus) and Spanish Psammodromus (Psammodromus hispanicus) mainly inhabit in the Iberian Peninsula. The gypsum deposits distribute throughout this region and small proportion of the area are sandy river valley. This research is implemented on the gypsum deposits and sandy river valley with different vegetation distribution. We would like to figure out the effect of diverse habitats on lizard abundance. This study may be influential in population ecology and biodiversity and conservation of lizards and their habitat.
The availability of captive breeding makes a big contribution to wildlife conservation. The zoos become a useful and scientific place for animal protection and conservation research. Moreover, some technologies, such as noninvasive endocrine monitoring, artificial insemination (AI) and semen cryopreservation are widely implemented during the captive breeding. Reintroduction programs have been established with effective managements and monitoring to ensure the wildlife survival rate, genetic purity and original biological traits. The Mexican grey wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) and Red Wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) are two successful examples of captive breeding in order to keep genetic diversity. This article has summarized these technologies which play an important role in Mexican grey wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) and Red Wolf (Canis rufus) conservation and may be influential in other species captive breeding.
The earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that is threatening biodiversity and genetic threats are among the causes of this challenge. However, the contribution of genetic threats to the extinction crisis is of current debate. In this paper, we present our arguments in light of loss of genetic variability, inbreeding depression, Accumulation of mildly deleterious mutations, local extinction in the presents of migration and extinction in metapopulations context. The extinction processes often operates across many facets hence the division between demographic, environmental and genetic just artificial. In addition, genetic threats only become important after populations have been driven to very low levels, particularly by human activities such as poaching, habitat fragmentation, introduction of invasive organisms and pollution. We advocate for conservation efforts to be distributed proportionally to threats posed by any factor, and as shown by most studies, most genetic threats are currently not priorities for many species.
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