Topic
Use of genome sequencing and genomic data to support management of small, threatened populations.
Hylaeus navai, a Fijian canopy bee, lost about 99% of its effective population over roughly 150 years, a genetic reconstruction in Ecology and Evolution estimates. The bee was found only in 2024, so the history comes from its DNA.
Reality
Leopardus tilcayo of the Bolivian Yungas was counted inside Leopardus tigrinus until 38 sequenced genomes separated it. The living animal itself is known from two individuals, one of them a captive male.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishersReality
Genomic evidence turns one widely distributed penguin into four species, three of them sub-Antarctic, and gives the Kerguelen birds the first new penguin name in more than a century. Conservation accounting now has to be done island group by island group.
Reality
Florida scrub-jays rarely breed before age two, and six months after 48 one-year-olds were released at a site stocked to its estimated carrying capacity, four of the ten new pairs had attempted a nest.
Reality
DNA from more than 100 museum specimens gives conservationists a century-long baseline for a declining British pollinator. The yearly rate of loss it measures is far too slow for a decade of field monitoring to have caught.
Reality
In some specimens fewer than 1% of the genome could be read, coverage most pipelines throw away. The Yale team placed those fragments against a tree of good genomes instead, which is why the museum drawer is the real finding.
Reality
A team in Finland assembled the species' genome from a living seal caught during a translocation programme, and posted it as a preprint. The population's inbreeding numbers still have to be measured.
Reality