C62 - Midterm Official Notes

Table of contents

1. Week 1: Introduction to the zoo

2. Week 2: Understanding biodiversity and protecting species

3. Week 3: The evolution of zoos and zoo-based conservation research

4. Week 4: Animal welfare science

5. Week 5: Population biology theory / Reproductive science

Week 1: Introduction to the Zoo

1. Identify the number of AZA accredited zoos that are over 1000 acres and recognize that zoos in general cover very small geographic areas (note: some of this was covered in lecture 3 in more detail).

2. Describe the characteristics of the Toronto Zoo, including...

   1. Its similarity / dissimilarity to the ‘average’ AZA zoo.

   2. The way animals are arranged within the zoo (i.e. largely based on geographic location, with a few older exhibits that are still taxonomically-organized).

   3. The level of governmental support it receives, and the type of ownership it is under (i.e. is it publicly or privately owned? At what level of government?)

   4. The zoo’s mission statement and its core values.

AZA accredited zoos

AZA - Association of Zoos and Aquariums

10 AZA accredited zoos are over 1000 acres - most zoos are small. Most are 1 acre in size.

Toronto zoo

Started off as a farm (riverdale farm which is now downtown). Opened in 1974, proposed in 1963, approver in 1967.

The term conservation biology was established in 1978 - so now we’re trying to add conservation to structures that already exist.

About 700 acres, 14th biggest AZA accredited zoo. A lot of the area is naturalized (underdeveloped). Larger than fresh kill in NJ.

300 exhibits, 500 species of animals, many plants, 6000 individual animals.

Organized by zoogeography - 7 geographic regions (Africa, Americas, Australasia, Eurasia, Canadian Domain, Indo-Malay, and Tundra Trek). There are several heated indoor pavilions: African-Rainforest, Americas, Australasia, and Indo-Malay.

Zoogeography: branch of biogeography that focuses on the distribution of animals across the planet

Many zoos are organized taxonomically - bird houses in Chicago, aquariums, butterfly conservation, reptilia.

Hidden zoo:

Educating the public is important, and there’s a private and public side to certain things like animal surgery and stuff. Can see what’s behind the scenes.

A lot of conservation efforts including captive breeding for release into wild is not exhibited to the public. This can make it difficult to share this with visitors. Zoo actively puts money to rehabilitation and release.

Trying to creatively show the hidden zoo to the public. Signage, advertising with baby turtles, least valuable sexiest animal shows stuff, adaptive genetics, rhinos tracking.

So many people work there - they have their own carpenters, electricians, nutritionists (Gorillas drink tea for morning sickness, personalized diets).

Budget:

The Toronto Zoo has a larger budget than many AZA-accredited institutes, but it is much smaller than places like the Animal Kingdom or San Diego zoo. Zoo gets a lot of money compared to median, but it’s also much larger than most zoos. They capture and clean water - green water to clean now. The aquariums are a problem for water supply.

• $50 million annual operating budget (39 million USD)

• Median is about 4 million USD, max 213 M, min 884 M.

The Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservatory is run separately but advertised the same.

Governance:

Privately owned are often not accredited, but the big ones usually are. Privately owned ones may be worse, but if they’re huge, they may be good and doing a lot better with higher business. May not be accredited ones that all do good.

Municipally-operated: Toronto Zoo

Provincially/State-operated: North Carolina Zoo

Federally operated: Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Public ones have everything shown to the world, and they have a board of managers that oversee the CEO.. Public has a right to know what’s happening.

Meeting minutes of Toronto Zoo board of managers are posted online. Also posts strategic and master plans, including past plans.

Toronto Zoo Mission and Vision:

Mission: Our Toronto Zoo - Connecting people, animals and conservation science to fight extinction

Vision: A world where wildlife and wild spaces thrive

Strategic priorities:

1. SAVE WILDLIFE - create a centre of excellence in conservation, sustainability, animal care, and science

2. IGNITE THE PASSION - build the team for the future

3. CREATE WOW - re-imagine the guest experience

4. OUR COMMUNITY + OUR ZOO - envision our zoo as the heart of our community

5. REVOLUTIONIZE ZOO TECHNOLOGY - lead the way for innovation in technology for zoos worldwide

Future plans: the conservation campus. May be where UofT classes take place.

Summary

Toronto zoo…

• is relatively young

• has a high operating budget

• is physically very large

• is organized based on zoogeography (few exceptions)

• is operated at the municipal level

• makes a significant contribution towards conservation

Week 2: Understanding biodiversity and protecting species

1. Describe all of the red terms within lecture slides, explain their significance, and where appropriate, give an example that fits the term.

2. Differentiate between the three different types of speciation, and give examples of each. From a given example, identify what type is being described.

3. Compare and contrast the species concepts covered in lecture, and give examples of each. List the strengths and weaknesses of each concept. From a given example, classify the organisms as separate species / same species using the different concepts.

4. Explain the role of ecological opportunities in producing biodiversity. Describe the pattern of diversification that occurs during an adaptive radiation. From a given example, predict whether or not an adaptive radiation could occur.

5. Identify the characteristics that make a species vulnerable to extinction. From a given example, determine whether or not a species would be at risk of extinction, and categorize different examples based on their level of risk.

6. Describe the methods used to conserve at risk species, and identify the order in which we typically apply them. From a given example, identify which one is most / least time intensive or cost effective.

7. Describe some of the different approaches used to conserve species (textbook 2.4 Conserving Species; pay special attention to box 2.3 Trigger approaches in conservation planning.)

8. Describe the difficulties with conservation approaches and conservation efforts (textbook: 2.5 Costs and benefits of conservation efforts.)

Terms

Alpha diversity: Local diversity

Gamma diversity: Regional diversity

Beta diversity: Spatial turnover (regional/local)

Speciation: Act of one lineage diverging into two lineages, changes accumulate over time.

Phyletic speciation: gradual transformation of one species into another over time

Hybrid speciation: formation of a novel species through hybridization between two parent species

Speciation

Biological Diversity and spatial scale

Biological diversity: all life on earth

• Genetic diversity: variation within a species’ genes (among individuals, between populations)

• Species diversity: all life on earth, varies locally, regionally, across larger scales

• Ecosystem diversity: variation of species across ecosystems, variation of ecosystems within an area

Species richness and composition vary with latitude, altitude (ocean depth), between continents at similar latitudes/longitudes, locally between the same community types/biomes

Diversity hierarchical structure: Alpha, Gamma, and Beta Diversity

The spatial scales of biodiversity vary

• Global scale = entire planet. Species can be isolated by mountains, oceans, distances over long periods. Rates of species, extinction, and dispersal all affect species diversity and composition differences.

• Regional scale = incl. smaller geographic areas where climate is roughly uniform / where species restricted by dispersal limitations. Regional species pool (gamma diversity) is all of the species within a region. Differs between regions based on variations in speciation, extinction and dispersal rates.

• Landscape scale = the physical geography of a region (number and distribution of mountains, valleys, deserts, islands, lakes) has strong impact on region biogeography. Differs based on how landscape shapes extinction and dispersal rates within local habitats.

• Local scale = Suitability of abiotic and biotic factors to support species from regional pool, and how species interactions affect ability of species to persist in local area (communities). Local (community) species diversity = alpha diversity. Turnover (Beta diversity) is the change in species composition across a landscape as move from local community to another.

Counting the number of species requires that we first define what a species is.

Individual organisms can be grouped together in different ways based on different criteria.

Species concepts

Biological species concept (BSC): a species is a group of individuals that can interbreed in nature and produce viable, fertile offspring

• Strengths

  • Interbreeding: populations that look and behave similarly

  • Reproductive isolation: evolutionary divergence/speciation

• Weaknesses

  • Fertile hybrids commonly form in nature

    • 10% of known bird species hybridize

    • 33% of known mammals species hybridize

    • 10% of primates hybridize in wild

  • Asexual species do not reproduce sexually

  • Allopatric species (separate due to physical distance) never meet in nature. (whereas sympatric - they meet in real life)

  • Very hard to tell if fossils could interbreed

  • Isolated taxa problematic

Mixing dog gives you something that actually exists, the wolves make hybrids. Species we know as distinct often form viable, fertile hybrids.

• Tigons and Ligar (Male tiger x female lion, male lion x female tiger) - females are both often fertile

• Wolphin = false killer whale and bottlenose dolphin are fertile.

• Pizzleys and Grolars (grizzly x polar bear) have at least some hybrids are fertile

Morphological Species Concept (MSC): a species is a group of individuals that can act distinctly from other groups based on their morphology biochemistry, or physiology

• Strengths:

  • Emphasizes characteristics that can be easily measured

  • Works for fossils, asexual species, allopatric species

• Weaknesses:

  • Sexually dimorphic species can lead to misleading groupings (fossils particularly hard)

    • Pine swamp warbler - Described by both Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon (ornithologists of 19th century). Looked nothing like Black-throated blue warblers. Where were the female BTB warblers - the pine swamp warblers are female black-throated blues

  • As can geographic variation in morphology within a species

  • Cryptic species exist, but lumped together

  • How much variation is “enough” (method is arbitrary)

Morphospecies: a taxon that is probably an individual species based on their appearance but has not been recognized as such as of yet.

Phenetic species concept: Problems with MSC led to this. Measure lots of characteristics to produce data (idea - less subjective). Use numbers to differentiate groups into species. This approach is still arbitrary and subjective (weakness).

Evolutionary Species Concept (ESC): a species is a group of individuals that share unique similarities of their DNA, and so share and evolutionary history.

• Strengths

  • DNA is the basic genetic information for all life, so can be widely applied (sexual and asexual organisms, younger fossils)

  • Includes a historic component (evolutionary history of organisms)

• Weaknesses

  • Pretty vague - how different (% DNA) do two things have to be to be considered different species?

    • Birds may only differ 0.5%, bacteria may be up to 10% different

  • DNA-based relationships can be confusing to delimit

    • Mutation rates can different between different species, or between regions of DNA in same species

    • Different parts of the genome have different evolutionary histories from one another - and DNA can introgress between species.

Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs)

• Populations within a species that contain unique genetic variation and evolutionary history. Generally identified based on unique variation in neutral genetic markers. No taxonomic status - akin to morphospecies. IUCN guidelines require that captive breeding programs protect this variation (individuals have to come from genetically similar populations to take part in same breeding program)

• IUCN = International union for conservation of nature

There are a lot of species concepts based on behaviour, geography, ecology, evolutionary history, and fate (future history), etc. All have strengths and weaknesses.

ESU have no status within taxonomy and are not backed well (widely, traditionally). Has gained support because of the biological species concept not providing consistent terminological solution to the units-in-nature problem.

We recognize species because how we define a group of organisms often dictates whether or not we recognize their value. Impacts on biodiversity and endemism, estimated population sizes, conservation efforts, and more.

Evolution

Adaptive radiations: diversification of a group of organism into forms that fill different ecological niches, occurs when ecological opportunity promotes rapid trait evolution and speciation

• Ecological opportunities: the availability of underutilized niches

  • May occur…

    • Following colonization of a new lineage into a new geographic region (eg. newly formed archipelago)

    • Following a mass extinction event

    • Evolution of a key innovation - utilization of a novel resource

Adaptive radiations increase biodiversity. Ecological opportunities come from occupying new territories. Adaptive radiations can occur if a lineage survives a mass extinction event, which leaves many empty niches.

Biodiversity tends to increase overtime. Marine animal genera increase a lot over time. After a major extinction event, they dipped and then ran up like crazy. Sometimes there are also minor extinction events.

Adaptive radiation often follows appearance of a key innovation within a lineage (key innovations: novel evolutionary character that allows a lineage to exploit resources in a new way)

Protecting species

Loss of biodiversity

Extinction: species has completely disappeared

Extinction in wild: species exists in ex-situ only (managed populations in zoos or natural areas where it is not native, cultivated populations)

Extirpation: species exist in wild elsewhere, but is no longer in specified area (note: can be applied to local and regional extincitons)

Local extinction: extinction of species locally, but it exists elsewhere

Regional extinction: extinction of species from country or region of interest, but it exist in wild elsewhere

Ecological extinction": species exists in-situ, but populations are very small - species has significant impact on its community

Endemism: a species that is geographically restricted to a region (when endemic is lost in one area, it is lost globally)

What makes a species vulnerable

Rare species are more vulnerable to extinction than common ones. Rare species include species…

• with narrow geographic ranges.

• that occupy rare or specialized habitats

• that exist in small populations

Stochastic processes: (1) demographic uncertainty (small pop), (2) environmental uncertainty (weather, food, disease), (3) natural catastrophe (floods, fires, drought), (4) genetic uncertainty (genetic makeup changes)

The term rare can be applied to the entire geographic range, or its distribution and abundance in a specific place (to identify conservation targets)

Area-demanding species: species with large home ranges are at risk. Jaguars rely on multiple habitat types and have large home ranges

Species that get hunted are at risk (overkill)

Species with large body sizes / low reproductive rates are at risk

Species that are poor dispersers are at risk

Seasonal migrants or other species that rely on two or more habitats for entire life cycle are at risk

• Migratory species rely on multiple habitats

  • Flyways in Europe and Africa

    • Flyways - migratory paths taken by birds and butterflies. Many flyways are in danger due to habitat destruction. Flyways also very likely to shift temporarily. Need to track changes to conserve flyways.

Species that lack genetic diversity are at risk

Specialists with specific niche requirements are at risk

Species found in pristine/undisturbed environments with no present contact with humans are at risk

Species that are susceptible to allee effect are at risk

Species with close relatives that are at risk are at risk

Species that are at highest risk category fall into more than one category, making them the most vulnerable species.

IUCN determines whose at risk

• Mission: to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.

• Founded in 1948 as the world’s first global environmental organization, and is now the largest professional global conservation network

• 1200 member organizations, 200+ government and 900+ non-government organizations

• Over 11 000 voluntary scientists and experts, grouped into six commissions in 160 countries.

• IUCN has a seat at the United Nations

IUCN publishes a red list

• Assesses extinction risk of known species based on recommendations of groups of taxonomic experts using published scientific research

• Conservation planning - informing species-based conservation actions. Plant areas, bird areas, key biodiversity areas, and alliance for zero extinction sites.

• Decision-making: influencing conservation decisions at multiple scales, from environmental impact assessments to international multilateral environmental agreements

• Monitoring - indicating the current status of species and revealing trends in their extinction risk over time, to track progress towards biodiversity targets

Managing threatened species

Four methods

1. Removing other stressors

   1. focus on areas that are resistant to damage from stressors, or resilient (recover).

   2. Involved translocations of non-focal species (elim invasive species)

   3. Artificial breeding ground

2. In-situ management

   1. Used when removing stressors is insufficient

   2. Protected zones (vaccines, culling)

   3. Can we use natural selection to improve fitness of populaiton

3. Assisted migration

   1. If part of conservation strategy, is done when all in-situ is exhausted

   2. Translocation of individuals or populations

   3. Introducing species to a new area, involves risk

4. Species rescue

   1. Ex-situ conservation - last resort

   2. Expensive, goal is to return species to wild.

1 is least intervention, 4 is most intervention, as well cheapest to most expensive. May move from 1 to 4 as needed

Conservation biology

1. In-situ conservation: conservation in native ecosystems or even man-made ecosystems where they naturally occur

2. Ex-situ conservation: conservation of samples of genetic diversity away from natural habitats

Trigger approaches in conservation planning

• Priority sites require one endangered or critically endangered species - only if it is the SOLE AREA where this species occurs, giving it significance. Definable boundary within which the character of habitats, bio communities, and/or management issues have more in common with each other than they do with those in adjacent areas.

• EDGE of existence programme: focus on threatened species that represent a significant amount of unique evolutionary history. Protect taxa. Weird looking animal with close relatives. Website highlighting top 100 EDGE species.

• Flagship species - charismatic species, draw financial support more easily.

Costs and benefits of conservation efforts

• Political corruption can lower government spending on public services and projects. Higher corruption have higher losses in biodiversity.

• Parks are very expensive and are a barrier to industrial development but they’re really good.

• Conservation costs less when the area around it is being developed simultaneously.

• Surrogate approaches may not adequately address the factors affecting individual species

Week 3: The evolution of zoos and zoo-based conservation research

1. Describe / explain significance of the following terms (lecture/ textbook)

   1. Carl Hagenbeck and Tierpark

   2. Heini Hediger

   3. William Temple Hornaday

   4. Studbooks

2. Describe the attributes of modern zoos, as compared to older menageries that were personally owned to show off an individual’s wealth, and describe the different menageries discussed in lecture. Identify the point in time at which zoos shifted from private menageries to public institutes and name the first of these institutes to exist (hint: it is where the word ‘zoo’ comes from). Identify the major focuses of most accredited modern zoos (lecture / textbook).

3. Describe the major shifts that led to modern zoos that were covered in lecture. Identify the key players for each step, and their major contributions.

   1. Increased emphasis on presentation (transition from sterile cages to panoramic exhibits – note that the focus was still on showing animals to the public at this point, not meeting the animal’s needs.)

   2. Advancements in animal care, concept of animal welfare

   3. Shift from ‘museum exhibits’ to focus on education & conservation of species, including the story of bison and how their noticeable decline towards extinction triggered the onset of shift iii.

   4. Improvements in conservation breeding and captive management and how this contributed to reintroduction efforts (lecture / textbook).

4. Explain the meaning behind the statement “There is not the slightest reason to hope that an adult Gorilla... will ever be seen living in a zoological park or garden... but we might as well accept that fact – because we cannot do otherwise.” Relate this to advancements in animal husbandry.

5. Define accreditation and explain how zoos can become accredited (meaning, recognize that they have to meet the standards of the accreditation body). Identify the importance of accreditation, and explain the role(s) of accrediting bodies in captive animal management plans. Note that for AZA zoos these are referred to as SSPs, which is trademarked. Other zoos use different terminology. (lecture / textbook). Identify the names and acronyms of the main ones discussed in lecture.

6. Within AZA, identify the group(s) responsible for SSP recommendations. Identify whether or not TAGs accurately represent species / taxon diversity, and whether or not zoo conservation programs focus on those species most at risk (textbook / lecture / tutorial).

7. Identify the four main areas within zoo conservation biology and the 6 pillars at the Toronto Zoo. Give examples of each (these can come from lecture / tutorial).

8. Describe the three types of objectives that people raise against zoos, and identify some of the counter-arguments (tutorial / textbook / assigned readings).

Terms

Carl Hagenbeck and Tierpark

• 19th century well-known supplier of wild animals. Inherited his father’s business of procuring and displaying exotic animals. “Ethnographic exhibitions” of “exotic” people. He would steal the animals as they were running away and put them on display.

• Beginning of 1900s, ethics of animal and human entertainment came into question. Hagenbeck sold off his circus. Abusing animals in animal training, then started training using rewards. Sold off circus and went into zoos.

• Increased emphasis on presentation. Created an animal park (“Tierpark”). Pioneer of zoo “panoramas”. More naturalistic settings as opposed to behind bars. Focus on more humane treatment of animals. Wanted viewers to have an experience.

Heini Hediger

• Heini Hediger (1908-1992): The father of zoo biology. Director of Zoo Zurich. Shifter zoos from human-perspective to animal-perspective. Studied dreaming, suffering thinking, and fear in animals.

  • First to assert that zoos should be shifted from human perspective to the animal-perspective. Psychology of animals.

• Advancements in animal care - shifts away from sterile settings, group animals based on social structure in anture, more varied and natural diets.

  • Animal behaviour: flight distance, critical distance, social distance, personal distance

• There are different species of things that may be similar, across different ecological niches. We need to treat them directly. Habitat design based on natural history of species.

William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937): Director of National Zoo (1889), Director of Bronx Zoo (1896). First director of the natural zoo. Smithsonian started with taxidermy. Shocked by how few bison there were. Changed his perception, went from a hunter to a conservationist. Switched to having a live zoo rather than taxidermy.

• He said lots of species could and would never thrive under human care. He thought breeding wild animals was cool, but a problem. Have to keep collecting and breeding. You are part of the problem. - Namely he mentioned adult Gorillas.

• Objectives of zoos:

  • Collect and exhibit fine and rare animals

  • Enable the greatest possible number of people to see them

• You get extinctions from animals that went extinct while in zoos. Thylacine was granted protective status 59 days before they went extinct. Knowledge and science just did not exist yet.

Studbooks: systematic keeping of records. Official record of the lineage of a specific breed of animal. Were used in early zoos to keep track of animals and their relation to each other.

Beginning of zoos

The first evidence of Zoos is in Egypt about 3500~ BCE. Collection of tombs in ancient Egypt. Most tombs were domesticated species (goats, sheep, dog). Exotic animals were seen a little bit. Elephant, hippos, etc.

Bones showed trauma, but also healing, meaning they were in captivity for awhile.

Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt (1500 BCE). Popularly called the first zoo. Queen sent people to a far off land, modern Eritrea. African species not found in Egypt, brought to a central area - show wealth/right of rule.

Emperor Charlemagne, Germany (~747-814). Emperor Montezuma II, Mexico (1466-1520). Vast amount of animals. White elephant was a gift. Lots of animals were shared and traded to prove good diplomatic relations. Animals weren’t treated particularly well. Large bird collection in Mexico. Run by people. Spanish soldiers noted how amazing it was, later went on to destroy it.

THE RENAISSANCE

1543: Andres Vesalius. First modern interpretation of anatomical structures

• 7 books on structure of human body. Before this there was a lot of unknowns, we were seeing a rise of natural history.

1558: Conrad Gessaner, Historia Animalium, 5 volumes.

• First collection of zoology. Map and draw different animals of the word. Took people at their word. Live baring animals - mammals, fish and aquatic animals, snakes and scorpions. Vies of animals have really changed, trying to look at it scientifically.

1651: William Harvey. Aphorism of Harvey. Omne vivum ex ovo (all life from the egg)

• Spontaneous generation. Sperm and egg idea

1675-1680: Anthony can Leeuwenhoek. Discovery microscopic life.

• Development of microscope. First sign of life on a different scale. Pathogens we can’t rise.

1758: Carolus Linnaeus. Development of binomial nomenclature system of taxonomy (e.g. Felis catus)

• Groupings based on reproduction, different taxa, families, genus

Menageries

Up until this point, zoos were menageries. Curiosity collections, status of wealth/power, represented empire’s reach, the term “zoo” was not in use yet.

Empire had relations to far off places. Terrible housing conditions.

Dawn of Modern Zoos

AZA - “a permanent institution that cares for and displays wildlife to the public”

Vienna zoo - established in 1752 as a Hapsburg monarchy menagerie. Opened to the public in 1778.

Tiergarten - old zoo.

London Zoo, est. 1826 is the first zoo for scientific study. Not just focused on entertainment. Canada not even a country yet.

• Founded by Zoological Society of London

• Funded with public money. Emphasis was on a study of animals.

1825: Zoological Society of London circulated a letter claiming the emphasis of this “new zoo” was on science. = “Members of the Society will have access”

The concept of extinction only came to acceptance in the early 1800s. Many iconic endangered species were not yet known by western scientists. People were feathering their hats - bird populations decreasing

Breeding Improvements

Animals were hard to breed. We’re focusing on animal care and seeing a benefit. Giant panda studies. Offspring benefited from staying with mothers, increased reproduction and reintroduction. First really great conservation in situ and ex situ (golden lion tamarin conservation program). Created a protective group. Captive breeding is very important, we should not be taking animals from the wild. Protecting natural populations in the wild to help keep up diversity.

Dr. Devra Kleiman - Smithsonian Institute. Behavioural observations, vocalization interpretations, and animal reintroduction preparations. Coordinated by the Golden Lion Tamarin Conservation Program.

Inbreeding and juvenile mortality were tied together in 1979 by Katharine Ralls with the Smithsonian Institute.

It’s important to manage animals. Studbooks (pedigrees showing relatedness), inbreeding molecular analysis, etc. 0-140 vs 0-400 - check y axis.

Captive management begins:

• 1977: Przewalski’s horse

• 1982: Guam rail

• 1982: Micronesian kingfisher

• 1987: California condor

  • Added 333, live 60 years and take years to reach sexual maturity

• 1987: Black-footed ferret

Extinction crisis

We have had a relatively slow growth as a species, only shooting up in the 1800s with the development of modern medicine preventing early death. Really high prediction. Huge increase in people on the planet, putting stress on the habitat.

Hectares of forest being lost per decade. Forests being cut down for agriculture. Highest loss in the 90s. Still putting tremendous stress on the amazon. Very challenging to see endangered species losing their homes.

Dissolved carbon dioxide going up. Decrease in pH of the oceans (acidification), which is affecting coral, coral bleaching affects. Shells that rely on carbonate breakdown.

We’re seeing the 6th mass extinction. Decrease everything everywhere. Pollution.

1985 - conservation biology is formed out of necessity. Crisis discipline. Goal - to provide principles and tools for preserving biological diversity (biodiversity)

• Changed the way we look at biology. Principles and tools for biodiversity.

Modern zoos

Most modern zoo mission statements focus on ‘conservation’ AND ‘education’. 152 / 160 zoo mission statements have the word conservation in them.

Zoos are inevitable. Ex-situ beacon, conservation insurance apology, educate people, impact and make change in the wild. If zoos didn’t already exist, any good conservation strategy would include them.

Husbandry advancements: we have 793 gorillas in zoos, with 16 births last year. Zoos have changed so much and developed so much. Still some animals need more research. Cardiovascular disease in captive gorillas. Great ape health will help with conservation in the end. Nutrition - largely herbivores, in the early days they were trying to feed them human diet, like yes here is a glass of milk.

Standards and accreditation

WAZA - World Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Accreditation Bodies

There are regional versions of WAZA. Covers all over the planet. Every continent.

AZA originated in 1924 as division of a parks association, became independent in 1972. We focus on AZA for today. Advancing well being, several activities they are apart of. Education program for staff.

• Accreditation program

  • 1974 - first accreditation, volunteering process (volunteer to be checked out)

  • 1985 - accreditation focused more on quality of animal rather than number of animals. Was made mandatory. 75% of zoos fell off.

  • Road zoos are very rampant like in tiger king. Animals are being abused or not taken care of properly.

  • Evaluated: Animal health, staff, living environment, social conditions, nutrition, conservation, enrichment, education, safety procedures, guest services, finances

  • Science and husbandry condition are considered. Dissemination of knowledge, should be reachable and beneficial to the general public.

  • More and more people are appreciating accreditation.

  • Toronto zoo is pretty large. 4th largest zoo in the world. A quarter of all zoos are less than 10 acres.

  • All 232 AZA-accredited zoos = total of 210 km²

  • 181 million people attend zoos. Amount of money spent on wildlife conservation by major international conservation organizations is high for nature conservancy, wwf global network, and world zoo and aquarium community.

  • There are 40 zoos in Ontario, 8 and CAZA accredited, and 2 are AZA accredited.

    • AZA is more stringent - only have 2 approved. Remaining are roadside zoos. We want to decrease the amount of them.

• Animal care programs

• Education program (for zoo professionals)

  • Can be different, taxa specific. Record keeping is very important.

  • Shows some fields at the Smithsonian website, lots of research programs

• Research programs

  • Zoo conservation biology divided into: captive animal management, translocation biology, conservation education, small population biology.

  • Conservation pillars: research and compliance operations, species recovery and assessment program, veterinary science, reproductive science, nutrition science, welfare science.

    • Reproductive can look at gametes. Over 100 publications by the Toronto Zoo Reproductive Science Lab.

      • Sperm preservation and cryopreservation

    • Biobanking, cryogenic.

    • Interdisciplinary - working with each other to collaborate

  • Conservation breeding and reintroduction: Long history. Black-footed ferret. Toronto Zoo was on of the first to do their thing.

  • Nutrition research

  • Animal welfare: machine learning to look at animals, what are they doing. Witnessing stereotypic behaviour at specific times.

  • Support of in-situ research: dissolve human animal conflict.

  • Eastern massasauga research: skin shed to genetically sex individuals

  • Global zoo research is major

  • We have come a long way.

• Animal management programs

  • TAG = taxon advisory group

  • Different groups of animals and how we can better manage them. Expert advisors for specific taxa. They set goals and essential actions, check for health problems and what needs to be looked into.

  • They look at most current research on how to increase the care.

  • There are terrestrial TAG, aquatic invertebrate TAG (2), amphibian TAG, fish TAG, reptilian TAG, avian TAG, mammalian TAG (19).

  • Imbalance of species survival plan. Trademarked by AZA. Reading and transfer plan for the species. Demographically varied group.

    • SSP = Species Survival Plan - 1981, trademark registered

  • Mammals, birds and reptiles have most SSP

  • Similar programs are run by other regional organizations (EEP)

  • Some species are managed collectively as Glocal Species Management Programs (GSMPs). Controlled by WAZA.

    • Deer pigs - combines regional plans into one to increase population size, target resources onto a species, slowly growing over time.

• Sponsor scientific journal (Zoo Biology)

Captive animal management - environmental enrichment, keeping species happy and healthy and enriched. Good stressors.

Translocation biology - Intentional movement of species to support their recovery in the wild

Conservation education - teach people about species and conservation through zoos

Small population biology - studying how small populations can become endangered or extinct, learning about species to keep them going.

Research and compliance operations: Supporting conservation efforts with a strong animal ethics and compliance foundation

Species recovery and assessment program: Local action to support at-risk species

Veterinary science: Ensuring healthy populations

Reproductive science: physiology-based solution for species survival

Nutrition science: evidence-based approach to optimizing and supporting conservation

Welfare science: building a foundation of animal welfare and well-being.

Arguments for and against zoos

Against: “they are fundamentally wrong” (divert attention from in-situ efforts and use animals for entertainment), “conservation and education claims by zoos are unjustified” (TV better educator, and the populations they’re saving are so small who cares), “zoos are operationally poor” (zoo staff don’t care about animal welfare and some zoo species should never be kept in zoos)

• Zoos directly support in-situ projects or through function, make ex-situ self-sustaining for eventual release.

• Zoo education can use individual animals to address the importance of conserving biological diversity and train conservationists

• AZA accredited zoos have management programs and train people like crazy.

Week 4: Animal welfare science

1. Describe / explain significance of the following terms (lecture/ textbook)

   1. FAWC and the five freedoms (Box 4.2 of textbook)

   2. Well-being

   3. Ethogram

   4. Behavioural husbandry

   5. Enrichment

2. List the major variables that need to be considered for species management purposes. From a given example, describe the variables that would need to be taken into account to safely house a species in captivity. Identify potential problems that could arise if these needs are not met (tutorial / textbook).

3. Describe the Toronto Zoo’s (TZ) welfare framework, including identifying the five domains. Explain how TZ optimizes animal welfare.

4. Describe TZ’s welfare assessment program. Identify the toolkit, and its four different parts. Explain when each part of the toolkit might be implemented (e.g., when might the zoo conduct a quality of life assessment on an animal?)

5. Identify the different steps to behavioural monitoring / research at the zoo, with examples (hypothetical, or as covered in lecture). Apply these methods to a novel case study.

6. Explain how behavioural husbandry at zoos has changed over time. Describe how training can be used as part of behavioural husbandry, with examples (hypothetical or as covered in lecture).

7. Differentiate between classical and operant conditioning. Give examples of each. From a given example, identify what type of conditioning is at work. Explain how conditioning can be used in behavioural husbandry.

8. Name and describe the different categories of enrichment. Identify potential benefits of enrichment to captive animals. Explain how enrichment is used at TZ (note: you will learn more about this one in future lectures and during our visit to the zoo).

Terms

FAWC and the five freedoms (Box 4.2 of textbook): animal welfare 1965 rule - farm animals should have freedom to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom, and stretch - was later updated in 2010 to the following…

1. Freedom from thirst, hunger and malnutrition - ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour

2. Freedom from discomfort (suitable environment)

3. Freedom from pain, injury and disease

4. Freedom to express most normal behaviour

5. Freedom from fear and distress

Well-being: a state of being comfortable, healthy or happy; achieved by giving animals lifelong opportunities to thrive. Measured on a continuum from good to poor.

Ethogram: a descriptive key for describing different behaviours to use as reference when identifying behaviours.

Behavioural husbandry: (look below)

Enrichment: (look below)

Animal Well-being

Toronto Zoo’s Welfare Framework: A holistic approach to animal well-being focused on the 5 domains → nutrition, environment, behaviour, health, and overall mental state.

• Nutrition: Animals receive a diet designed for their species to maintain optimal behavioural and physical health. The needs but also how we do it. Can they interact properly with everything. Not only what but how.

• Environment: Our animals experience appropriate habitats that provide opportunities take care of themselves and stay comfortable and safe. Important for them to maintain health - are they self cleaning.

• Health: Our animals have opportunity to experience good physical health through regular check-ups and quick treatment when they’re sick or injured. Strong and healthy at every stage of life.

• Behaviour: Appropriate behaviours through quality spaces and appropriate social groupings. Meet social and developmental needs of each species. Incorporate natural social groupings to whole repertoire.

• Mental State: animals experience positive emotions, while reducing stress and negative experiences as much as possible. Some stress is beneficial to survival, they should still express that. Reducing stress, but not eradicating it.

We optimize animal welfare by thinking critically about each domain. When staff goes home, there should be success without them. Maximize the animals daily opportunities for experience, work to understand the animals 24/7 experience, review animals natural history, always consider the individual.

Each animals wellbeing is assessed regularly - making animal well-being a decision-making filter, ensuring that every animal’s welfare status is regularly assessed.

Everyone at the Toronto Zoo is part of the welfare team and must undergo welfare training - your behaviour may affect an animal.

Welfare Assessment Toolkit

1. Annual welfare assessment

2. Quality of life form

3. Life event/change quiz

4. Zoomonitor program

Holistic approach looking at both welfare inputs & outputs. Every animal included in an assessment at least once annually.

Opportunities:

• Inputs

  • Food quality, veterinary services, enrichment, husbandry training, environment

Indicators:

• Outputs

  • Activity budget, immune function, body condition, reproductive success, mental state

What are the things we can do to increase animal welfare. Different care, environments we design (opportunities) vs. immune function, body condition (indicators). Think critically about what can we do, how is it being translated into animal experience and how they feel, at least once a year for every animal on site.

Quality of life assessment is intended for aged animals, animals with chronic conditions, and animals at sensitive periods. Assessment provides framework for stakeholder discussions, a score which dictates future assessment frequency, ability to track changes in QoL across time.

• Numerical score doesn’t indicate well being - just shows what care is next. Check score again and again to see change.

• Assessment is important for individuals, not done on whole populations

Life/event change quiz: intended for any time an animal undergoes a significant event or change. Triggered by events such as construction, changes in social groups, internal or external moves, extreme weather, special events, participation in research projects. Checking in on giraffes after they’re moved.

Zoo monitor program: behavioural monitoring app that our welfare science team uses regularly to collect behavioural data across the zoo. Lincoln park zoo. Moving habitats on site - how did he adjust, what was the activity budget like (how are they spending their time), anything you want to check in on.

Behavioural monitoring

Steps:

1. Identify behavioural objective - what are you trying to achieve? State clear and specific objectives.

2. Assess the situation and gather information - basic background info, environmental factors, human-animal interactions, facility & operations, social dynamics, health status.

3. Develop hypothesis - why is the behaviour occurring. Making an educated guess as to why the behaviour is occurring. “This is due to mobility issues” vs “this is due to social dynamics”

4. Develop methods - methods will address your why. Build out different methods. Change the perch to promote better. Reasoning will change your hypothesis. May make two methods per hypothesis. Mapping and looking at different patterns.

   1. Sampling measurements we are going to use.

   2. May be bias towards obvious behaviours. Use all occurrences. Interval sampling - what’s best in zoos.

   3. Control for diet, social partners, enrichment, management schedule

   4. Variables you can’t control for, but take data on: weather, health, crowds.

   5. Build an ethogram to track behaviours - make sure you know what you’re looking at

      

5. Evaluate progress and results - what have we learned from baseline data collection. Was there preference to something.

Behavioural husbandry

Behavioural husbandry: made up of physical and behavioural environment

• Physical husbandry: food, water, cleaning

• Behaviour husbandry: enrichment, training, mental stimulation

You want to challenge animals, can they do their natural ability.

Zoos use to be shooting animals with sedatives all the time thinking “you can’t train a big bear”. Now zoos have a heat pad warmer for paw, feed it blubber fat. Teach it mini tasks.

Training

Cooperative care: Getting the animals to assist us in caring for them. It’s pretty easy to take blood from a polar bear that is trained. Sedating costs a lot, and stresses animals out a lot. Very dangerous. Empowering our animals with control and agency in their care. Focusing on medical behaviours, mitigating stressful situation and ensuring they have choice and control in their lives.

• Voluntary eye drops - Took a few training sessions, then bear got hair in its eyes.

• Lemurs getting in their cages

Training as an enrichment tool / welfare tool - studies show animals enjoy cognitive challenges. Powerful tool to avoid stressful situation, pretty positive over time. Stacking games on top of each other. Do a behaviour, get a token in a thing, get a treat.

How do we train our animal - by combining two forms of learning known as Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning: associate an involuntary response and a stimulus

  • Zookeeper keys

  • 

• Operant conditioning: associate a voluntary behaviour and a consequence

  • A form of learning in which behaviour is influences by consequence.

  • 

Enrichment

Enrichment is a very important tool. There are 5 categories. It varies by animal. Pack of wolves care about social, but polar bears may be solitary.

Goal based enrichment is what we’re working with. Enhance an animal’s well-being by targeting specific natural species specific behavioural and psychological needs. We want this animal to do specific behaviour related to natural history, evaluate over time.

Challenge should provide some productive stress, otherwise they’ll be bored.

Grizzly bear - established a goal to get them active after 5 PM. Changed activity times. Bear lost a ton of weight. Timed feeder - once it fills, it’s dumped.

AZA accredited: highest standards in animal care and welfar and provide a fun, safe, and educational family experience. Scientific research, conservation, and education programs. Well-being of the animals in our care is both our moral responsibility and foundation to AZA’s mission.

Week 5: Population biology theory and reproductive science

Population Biology

1. Describe all the red terms within lecture slides, explain their significance, and where appropriate, give an example that fits the term. Differentiate between directional purifying selection, genetic load / genetic purging (see page 125 in textbook for purging explanation), inbreeding depression / outbreeding depression (lecture, textbook, tutorial).

2. Identify the different factors that can influence population dynamics and give examples of each. From a given example, name the factor being described.

3. Explain the small population paradigm, referring to the different forces that play a role in extinction vortices. Describe the short term and long term impacts of the loss of genetic diversity within small populations (lecture, textbook, tutorial).

4. Identify the four mechanisms of evolution and explain each one. Give examples of each. Predict how each force might impact a given example.

5. Compare and contrast the rate of fixation with neutral alleles versus ones that have fitness costs associated with them. Explain the expected pattern for each. Draw a graph showing the expected pattern of fixation for dominant advantageous, recessive advantageous, disadvantageous and neutral alleles. Describe how population size impacts these patterns (lecture / tutorial).

Stochasticity

Stochasticity affects small populations in different growth rates and fluctuations. We worry about small populations. Starting with low number, then causing growth rate to fluctuate over time.

Small population paradigm: population viability and population size are directly proportional to each other. Critical threshold and then jump very high.

Extinction vortex: tendency for small populations to decline towards extinction over time.

• Environmental and demographic uncertainty effects, positive population regulation, genetic factors (inbreeding and drift), and interactive effects

  • Environmental stochasticity - catastrophe, pathogen, disease, etc.

  • Demographic stochasticity - inbreeding, effective population size much smallest. Not two unconnected individuals of the gene pool anymore.

  • Genetic stochasticity - drift and inbreeding, and their impacts on future adaptive potential of a population

  • Interactive effects: factors all reinforce each other to increase instabilities once population gets too small

• Addressing original cause of decline often insufficient to rescue species from extinction

• We need to also address result of decline

Allee effects: individual fitness decreases when population density decreases; very small population sizes

• Inability to find mates

• Interruptions in behaviours - mating/courtship, predator avoidance, thermoregulation, other social behaviours

• Passenger pigeon

• Sudden crash when population size reaches minimum threshold size

• Pigeons stay together - put 50 pigeons together, 5% likely to get scooped, one pigeon alone has a 90% chance of being captured

• Critical threshold is higher for things with Allee effects kicking in

Why is genetic diversity so important

• Two major factors

  • Inbreeding depression - short-term impacts

  • Loss of genetic diversity - long-term impacts

• What causes this?

  • Stochastic changes in genetic composition over time due to small population size

  • Long term impace - loss of ability to adapt in future

You lose adaptive behaviour. Genetics are healthier - less bottleneck.

Mechanisms of evolution

Mutations

• Introduces new alleles (beneficial, neutral and deleterious ones)

• Macroevolution is changing the entire gene pool.

• Most mutations are bad, they’re more likely to be neutral than good.

• Natural selection makes you stick with good ones. If a mutation made you pink hey that’s not good.

• We’re all under pressure to evolve. With coding regions, it’s dangerous. Non-coding is generally is neutral.

• 90% of all mutations occur in non-coding regions and likely do not impact fitness.

Natural selection

• Changes in allele frequency of advantageous/disadvantageous alleles based on their impact on fitness

• Not all organisms leave the same amount of alleles.

• Process through which heritable traits increase or decrease through fitness-based differential reproductive success.

• Adaptation: process by which populations become better suited to their environments through natural selection

• Neutral adaptations are never going to be under natural selections. Individuals vary in their traits, some of that variation is heritable and some affects their fitness.

• Directional selection: acts on positive alleles (beneficial alleles) causing them to increase over time. Good allele increasing, good allele was dominant. Maryland grey squirrels and north black squirrels.

• Purifying selection: removes negative alleles (deleterious alleles) over time, causing them to decline over time. White animals in nature get eaten very quickly (albino)

• Fixation: when one allele becomes the ONLY allele in the genepool for a specific locus. All individuals are now homozygous for that allele.

• Dominant alleles increase in frequency quickly, but fixation takes a long time. Recessive alleles increase in frequency much slower, but fixation is very fast once they are common. Additive alleles increase slower than dominant, but go to fixation quicker. Speed of fixation varies between dominant, additive, and recessive beneficial alleles.

• Harder to get rid of a recessive bad allele - adds to inbreeding depression

• Selection coefficient: numerical measure of degree of natural selection against a specific genotype (measured through relative fitness). Selection against a specific allele.

• Relative fitness: number of offspring an individual produces, or length of time it lives, relative to other individuals in the population (scaled from 0 to 1)

• Genetic lethal mutation: causes death of individuals before they can reproduce (strong S against these alleles)

  • S = 0; variant has an average lifespan, produces the average number of offspring in their lifetime

  • S=1; variant dies young, before any chance at producing offspring

  • s=0.3; variant lives 30% less time or produces 30% less offspring

Genetic drift

• Changes in allele frequency due to random chance (e.g. which allele makes it into gamete, which birds make it to an island in a founder event)

• Drift events include whether an individual mates before it dies, and in heterozygotes, which allele is passed on in

• Drift is random (in fitness), always occuring in all populations, most pronounced in very small populations

• In very small populations, drift is more likely than selection to dictate the rate of fixation or loss of alleles.

• Decrease in heterozygosity (H) - loss of heterozygote advantage, increased potential for expression of recessive deleterious phenotypes

  • Once everyone is the same, you can’t have natural selection act on a trait. Selection coefficient is 0 when everyone has the allele. Requires heritable genetic variation at that point.

• Loss of alleles - can “fix” deleterious alleles in populations (note can also fix beneficial ones). Can result in loss of beneficial alleles.

• Small populations: decrease natural selection, increase genetic drift. Genetic lethal is always going to be affected and worked on by natural selection because it just dies.

• Large populations: increase natural selection, decrease genetic drift. Natural selection becomes main force determining fate of alleles in all regions of genome that confer fitness advantages / disadvantage. Neutral genetic variation is still determined by drift.

• Effective population size: the size of an ideal theoretical population that would lose heterozygosity (H) at same rate as the actual population of interest.

• N_e - number of breeding individuals in population. Can be reduced by past bottlneck drift, inbreeding (across successive generations), variation in sex ratio or other factors that influence individual mating success (captive breeding - very fecund will eventually represent entire population). If you maintain cery large population - selection very adaptive.

• MVP - Minimum Viable Population: for any given species, in any habitat, is the smallest isolated population having 99% chance of remaining extant fro 1000 years despite the foreseeable effect of demographic, environmental, and genetic stochasticity, and natural catastrophes.

Gene flow:

• Can introduce new alleles into populations and remove item.

• Alleles move between populations through immigration or emigration of individuals (followed by breeding)

• When gene flow is absent, selection and drift can cause populations to diverge over time because: random changes in allele frequencies are unlikely to be identical in different populations, adaptations will be specific to habitat of each population, over time divergence in allele frequencies between populations will increase, rate of divergence increases when populations are smaller.

• Isolation-by-distance: populations become genetically distinct (can lead to speciation).

Effects of loss of gene flow…

Inbreeding depression: breeding between close relatives in small populations leads to increased mortality of offspring, production of fewer offspring, unfit or sterile offspring, or offspring with reduced mating success.

• Caused by rare deleterious alleles, unrelated members of a population, population shrink, close relatives who mate more likely to produce.

• Increase homozygosity increase deleterious recessive phenotype. Decrease heterozygosity at loci where heterozygosity is selectively advantageous (loss of heterozygous advantage)

• Genetic purging: decrease frequency of deleterious recessive alleles in population through natural selection (recessive alleles can’t hide in heterozygous anymore). Increase fitness of overall population now lacks genetic variation.

Outbreeding depression

• Production of offspring that are unfit, sterile, lack of adaptations for local environment due to interbreeding of individuals who are genetically too different from one another.

• Mechanisms - isolated populations adapt to local conditions - hybrids are adapted to neither habitat.

• When gene flow resumes - loss of local adaptations, decreased individuals

Reproductive science

1. Describe / explain significance of the following terms

   1. ARTS (all methods mentioned in lecture)

   2. Personalized medicine (contrast with livestock breeding approach)

   3. Unintended (accidental) domestication

   4. Studbooks and mean kinship-based mating

2. Identify the main goal for captive breeding programs, and describe the challenges involved in meeting this goal. Explain why we will often disregard natural breeding strategies for organisms in captive breeding programs.

3. Explain what factors go into determining how valuable an organism will be in terms of captive breeding (hint: why would this individual be considered ‘genetically valuable’ compared to other individuals in the breeding program.

4. For each reproductive technology discussed in lecture, identify its uses and any potential challenges to using it.

5. List ways that ARTs have been used to benefit captive breeding programs. Discuss the specific zoo animal examples of ART usage from lecture (e.g., why did we give hormones to a pregnant female rhino, why is it so important to monitor the hormone levels of female cats (and possibly to give them hormone injections), etc.)

6. Identify ways that zoos can captively manage populations to maintain genetic diversity, giving examples from lecture (including discussing the benefits of moving gametes globally, rather than individual animals). Explain the importance of employing ARTs in captively-bred populations before they become too small / too inbred (tie this content to part A).

Terms

ARTS (all methods mentioned in lecture): assisted reproductive technologies. Genetics, sex, age, health. Take into consideration the 4 things, creating treatment plain per individual. How suit tech and tools to preserve and maintain. All technologies on a scale of cost and invasiveness.

• 

• May overcome stuff. Reduce population size. 300 sperms from cheetahs in a tank cryogenically program.

Personalized medicine (contrast with livestock breeding approach)

Unintended (accidental) domestication

Studbooks and mean kinship-based mating

Threats of biodiversity

It is getting worse and worse, different by areas in the world. Zoo has the ability to care for animals. Contribute with schools, governments, more recent events. Zoos were meant as a menagerie, shifted focus.

Zoos offer enormous potential for contributing to wildlife conservation.

Goal of conservation breeding programs: maintain 90% genetic diversity for 100 years. Challenge of genetic diversity - adequate number and genetic make up, lack of holding/breeding space, husbandry expertise to support consistent, reproductive efficiency (age/sex structure, compatibility). Poor reproductive efficiency if everything is the same - all old, all young.

Species sustainability is reproductive success - made from environment, nutrition, health, genetics, behaviour.

Conservation breeding protocols disregard natural breeding strategies: mate choice, sperm competition, monogamy/polygamy → unintentional domestication

Reproductive science

Endocrinology:

• Non-invasive hormone monitoring. Reproductive hormones. Glucocorticoids. Support zoo and wild populations.

• Urine, hair, poop.

• Hormone monitoring is used for estrus, pregnancy, sexual maturity, seasonality, fertility, hormone therapy.

• Seasonality, pregnancy and wild populations. Test all.

• Not sexually mature between year 2 and 3, outside of breeding season, testes completely compress.

• Normal cycles at the beginning, and then hormones peak. Once we understand species, we can move to single samples.

• Hormone manipulation - make them cycle when we need them to cycle. Make them horny.

• Pregnancy cycles - something about 3x more cycling.

Gamete biology

• Fertility assessment. Artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization. Somatic cell culture.

• Artificial insemination: most powerful of all ARTs. Least invasive or complex technique, fertilization and embryo development in the natural environment, greatest potential for success and widespread application. Least invasive where we’re handling embryo.

  • Good in a small gene pool - ferrets had 142 born. 82 inseminations, 42 pregnancies.

  • Genetic distriburion crashes, need to get stuff back on track.

  • Sex sorting sperm - gender selection. Need a ton of females.

• In Vitro fertilization: focus on female genetic. Need all the media and everything. Important tool for preserving female genetics. Invasive retrieval of oocytes requires specific tools and skills, development of complex embry culture systems required, successes are difficult to achieve.

  • Ended up dying from and infection, passing away. Helps with incredibly rare and endangered species.

• Assisted fertilization: animals that just weren’t breeding. Did everything, but couldn’t coordinate themselves. Oregon spotted frog - canadian species, 2019 sent 130 tadpoles out.

• Somatic cell technologies: cloning extremely invasive, expensive, complex, everything from IVF and then some. Possible tool for preserving sterile/deceased animals. Knowledge of in vitro culture required, specialized equipment and skills required, live healthy birds difficult to achieve. Took nucleus, put in cell of ferret in domestic ferret, forced to divide. Very very difficult.

Biobank

• Long term storage of living genetic material. Supports assisted reproductive technologies.

Week 6: Captive Breeding Programs & Species Recovery

Species recover

1. Describe / explain the significance of:

   1. IUCN Greenlist definition - A species is fully recovered if it is present in all parts of its range, viable, and performing its ecological functions in all parts of the range.

   2. ESA (Endangered Species Act) – Ontario legislation

   3. SARA (Species at risk Act) – federal legislation

   4. Convention on Biological Diversity and Aichi targets

   5. EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessments)

   6. Headstarting

2. Discuss the state of wildlife globally / in Canada as covered in lecture.

   1. Every country has many species at risk. Great lakes program working with vertebrates. 2000-2023 we added pieves - turtle island conservation, giving indigenous lens. Native bat conservation program (2015) in response to a loss of species in Canada.

3. Describe in brief the history of Species Recovery at the Toronto zoo, and identify it’s three major themes (see slide 8 for the themes).

   1. Outreach and communication

   2. Community services.

   3. In-situ monitoring and research: all encompassing, zoo has power to do things others can’t.

4. Explain the conceptual approach to conservation discussed in lecture and relate it to actions that the zoo can take towards species recovery. Discuss the different criteria used to determine whether or not a species in Ontario can be classified as at risk of extinction (lecture).

   1. Government legislation - framework of identifying and assessing species. Species assessment (COSSARO) broad picture of where we focus - SAR legislation, recovery strategies (once species is listed, need to commute to a recovery strategy).

   2. Zoological practice - care for animals, have guests. Broad expectation zoos should be doing conservation in a meaningful way, the accreditation requires this. Maintaining standard and programming. Mandate does wider, zoo expectations involve that of a broader audience.

   3. Global biodiversity - identifying big picture risks and targets. Non-governmental biodiversity targets. Getting to higher level, aligned with this, not heading off too far into own dimension.

5. For the blanding’s turtle case study, identify the following: the initial criterion used to label the species as at risk, the three main goals of the project, the major success indicators of the project to date, reasons why we still aren’t sure about the long-term success of the project (hint: refer to information covered verbally and on the missing population demographics slide from lecture).

   1. Initial criterion to label the species at risk: Decline in adult population (Criterion A)

   2. 3 main goals of the project: Re-establish a sustainable population in a historic part of their Ontario range, evalutate headstarting as a conservation tool for freshwater turtles, fill knowledge gaps relating to recovery.

   3. Major success indicators of the project date:Deliver enough to complete headstart with sufficient individuals, reach 100-150 individuals by 2040, know turtles are reproducing, record evidence of turtles successfully over winter.

   4. Reasons why we still aren’t sure about long term success: Missing population data. 48 headstarts lost.

6. For the bat case study, identify the following: the reasons why various bat species were at risk of extinction, the reasons why the zoo decided against breeding the bats in captivity, describe the three research priorities identified, explain the importance of evaluating conservation goals before implementing them (see quote from Rachel T. Buxton), describe some of the outcomes from this research.

   1. Reason for risk of extinction: massive sudden decline - 94% of hibernating bats got white nose syndrome.

   2. Reasons why the zoo decided against breeding the bats in captivity: Can’t collect bats and put them back - acoustics work.

   3. Three research priorities identified: Acousitcs (fly around yelling, we record it), need to get hands on something (confirming species, sexing, healthy, different metrics) (learn about where they live), radio transmitter (gluing it to the back) (connection on Northern Ontario)

   4. Explain the importance of evaluation conservation goals before implementing them:

Arabian Tahr Reinforcement

1. Describe / explain the significance of:

   1. Reinforcement versus reintroductions -

   2. Living Planet Report -

   3. Accreditation and its value towards conservation -

2. Identify the main recovery goal for this program. Identify the status of the Arabian Tahr at the start of this program compared to today. Describe actions taken by the people involved in this program to save this species from becoming extinct in the wild. Identify the successes of this program as outlined in lecture.

   1. Establish a wild population in the UAE that has at least 80% probability of persisting for 20 years. This level of viability, established by the world conservation union (IUCN), commonly used as a quantitative indicator of endangerment.

3. This conservation project used molecular genetics to create a breeding matrix based on relatedness. Why did they do this? What were the goals of this? Hint: think about what you learned in the population biology theory lecture and relate it to this project.

4. Once the habitat at release sites had been restored via irrigation, animals from this conservation breeding program were released. One was killed by a native predator (Arabian caracal), and others faced competition from domesticated goats that invaded the area and also ate the Tahr’s food. Why were the scientists concerned about the presence of the goats, but not the caracal? (Hint: think about the goals of this project in terms of restoring native species interactions versus the impacts of invasive species, such as the domesticated goats).