New research published recently in the journal Ecology Letters has estimated just 17,000 Tasmanian devils remain in the wild, a significant decline since the estimated peak of 53,000 in 1996, when the deadly facial tumour disease was first identified and that has since ravaged the species. Wildlife ecologist and lead […]
Scientists have long puzzled over how and why the fatal facial tumour disease that continues to ravage populations of Tasmanian devils in the wild became a transmissible cancer, given tumours usually grow exclusively in the organism where their cell of origin derives from. An international study that involved scientists from […]
Since the deadly facial tumour disease that has ravaged Tasmanian devil populations in the wild was first observed over 20 years ago, scientists have puzzled over the circumstances that caused it both to emerge, and to spread so rapidly. Two studies published recently provide some insight and perspective on the […]
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 […]
