In March the Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal announced the winners in its latest round of grants and scholarships that will contribute towards research designed to combat the fatal facial tumour disease that has ravaged the species in the wild since the mid-1990s. More than $375,000 has been awarded this […]
The results of an international study published recently in Scientific Reports has confirmed the fatal facial tumour disease that has decimated populations of Tasmanian devils in the wild for over 20 years, can be cured using immunotherapy. Led by the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research, the study […]
Research by an international team of scientists, published at the end of August in the journal Nature Communications, shows two regions in the genomes of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) appear to be evolving in response to the fatal facial tumour disease that has ravaged populations in the wild for almost […]
It was curiosity about the reasons for Tasmanian devils’ low genetic diversity, a characteristic that was often noted but never fully explained in many of the papers she was reading, that prompted University of Tasmania PhD candidate Anna Brüniche-Olsen to discover why. The results of her study, the first to […]
Pathogen-driven declines in animal populations are increasingly regarded as a major conservation issue. The Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) is threatened with extinction by devil facial tumor disease, a unique transmissible cancer. The disease is transmitted through direct transfer of tumor cells, which is possible because the genetic diversity of Tasmanian devils […]
