It stands to reason that as the cost of finding and an over-harvested medicinal plant, say, increases beyond the market value of the product, people will stop looking for it, hopefully giving the population a chance to recover. Well, yes, but what if the very increasing rarity of the plant – or animal – actually in turn ratchets up its value? The result is a positive feedback loop which can only end in extinction. Or so says a mathematical model described in Nature, backed up by some telling examples. So publicizing the fact that a species may be rare and threatened (for example, in a Red Data List) may actually make things worse! Taking species into cultivation may be one way around the problem.
Possible blogging hiatus
We may or may not be having a coup today here in Fiji, so blogging may be erratic for the next couple of days…
Fido not a domesticated wolf?
Domestic dogs are derived from wolves, right? Maybe not. There is apparently a minority view that says that a better interpretation of behavioural, morphological and genetic differences between the domestic dog and the wolf is that the dog was domesticated from a now-extinct, pariah-like precursor, with occasional hybridization with wolves along the way. You can read more about this controversial view on Darren Naish’s zoological blog.
Ethiopian coffee controversy update
Kathryn over at Blogging Biodiversity rounds up the latest on Starbucks vs Ethiopia here.
Storing ram semen
There’s an article in The Economist (subscription needed, but you can also read it here), of all places, on the storage of livestock semen for transportation. There are apparently chemical additives available that prolong the life of bull and boar sperm, but nothing yet for ram sperm. This is a pity because semen is a much more convenient and cheap way of moving genes about than transporting live animals, not to mention safer. Which is why the ministry responsible for agriculture in the UK asked the Institute of Zoology in London to have a look at the problem. They decided to start by working out how all sorts of wild species with long-lived sperm – from bats to sharks – achieve that feat. A promising mixture of proteins called sAPM (soluble apical plasma membranes) has been identified, but the details are still secret. Could this have implications for ex situ conservation of sheep genetic resources?