Abstract
Today, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) is found only on the island of Tasmania, despite once being widespread across mainland Australia. While the devil is thought to have become extinct on the mainland approximately 3000 years ago, three specimens were collected in Victoria (south-eastern Australia) between 1912 and 1991, raising the possibility that a relict mainland population survived in the area. Alternatively, these devils may have escaped captivity or were deliberately released after being transported from Tasmania, a practice that has been strictly controlled since the onset of devil facial tumour disease in the early 1990s. Such quarantine regimes are important to protect disease-free, ‘insurance populations’ in zoos on the mainland. To test whether the three Victorian devils were members of a relict mainland population or had been recently transported from Tasmania we identified seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the mitochondrial genome that can distinguish between Tasmanian and ancient mainland populations. The three Victorian devil specimens have the same seven SNPs diagnostic of modern Tasmanian devils, confirming that they were most likely transported from Tasmania and do not represent a remnant population of mainland devils.
Highlights
Lazarus taxa—species thought to be extinct but rediscovered alive—stand in stark contrast to the current worldwide extinction crisis
The Australian vertebrate fauna has suffered a high rate of anthropogenic extinctions in the last 200 years, and has a relatively high rate of species rediscovery [1]
Australian Lazarus species include the night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis, rediscovered in 1990 after no sightings for almost 80 years) [2], the Dibbler (Parantechinus apicalis, presumed extinct in the wild for 63 years until an individual was captured in 1967) [3], Gilbert’s potoroo (Potorous gilbertii rediscovered alive in 1994 after having been thought extinct for over 100 years) [4] and the tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus, observed on a motion-detecting camera in the Victorian Grampians in 2013, 141 years after it was last seen in that area) [5]
Summary
Lazarus taxa—species thought to be extinct but rediscovered alive—stand in stark contrast to the current worldwide extinction crisis. None of these proposals have considered the impacts of translocating Tasmanian devils into areas potentially already occupied by relict populations of mainland devils. For both insurance population management and rewilding proposals, it is critical to know if a remnant population of devils survives on the mainland, and whether this population represents an ancient relict or a recent introduction. To test whether the Victorian devils were members of a relict mainland population or had been recently transported from Tasmania, we analysed and compared mitochondrial DNA from the three museum specimens with data from Tasmanian (extant and subfossil) and mainland (subfossil) devils
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