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Lat­est dev­ils research yields sur­pris­ing results

Evolv­ing to become less aggres­sive could be the key to sav­ing the Tas­man­ian devil (Sar­cophilus har­risii) from extinc­tion, new research sug­gests. The new study, pub­lished online on 3 Sep­tem­ber in the British Eco­log­i­cal Society’s Jour­nal of Ani­mal Ecol­ogy, found that the less often a devil gets bit­ten, the more likely it is to become infected with the Devil Facial Tumour Dis­ease (DFTD) cancer.

Dr Rodrigo Hamede, lead author, UTAS School of Zoology

To find out whether bit­ing fre­quency pre­dicted acquir­ing DFTD, Dr Hamede and his col­leagues set up dozens of devil traps at two sites for 10-​day peri­ods every three months between 2006 and 2010. They then recorded the pat­tern of injuries in the dev­ils and iden­ti­fied any tumours. One of the sites — West Pen­cil Pine — was selected because dev­ils there seem to be less badly hit by the disease.

They made three dis­cov­er­ies: the level of bites was sim­i­lar at both sites; dev­ils with fewer bites were sig­nif­i­cantly more likely to develop DFTD; and most tumours occurred in dev­ils’ mouths.

Because there is no treat­ment for, or vac­cine against, DFTD, the find­ings and the next stage of the research have impor­tant impli­ca­tions for sav­ing the species from extinc­tion. “Our next step is fas­ci­nat­ing. First we need to explore the genetic dif­fer­ences that might be less­en­ing the impact of DFTD in the West Pen­cil Pine devil pop­u­la­tion. Sec­ond, we need more detailed data on devil behav­iour to define ‘shy’ or ‘bold’ types.

“We could then use this infor­ma­tion to develop a man­age­ment strat­egy to reduce the spread of the dis­ease by boost­ing nat­ural selec­tion of less aggres­sive, and there­fore more resilient, devils.”

Under­stand­ing how infec­tious dis­eases spread is key to con­trol­ling them, but study­ing dis­ease trans­mis­sion in wild ani­mals is often very dif­fi­cult. And in DFTD, which is spread by bit­ing, ecol­o­gists also need a bet­ter under­stand­ing of devil behav­iour. Dev­ils are soli­tary yet social ani­mals. They do not live in groups but meet each other often, either dur­ing mat­ing, estab­lish­ing social hier­ar­chies or when feed­ing around car­casses — all occa­sions when they bite each other.

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at Uni­ver­sity of Tas­ma­nia web­site. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Source: UTAS News, 04.09.2012)