Good Candidates for New Ex Situ Programs?

There are countless species currently faced with extinction, and only a minute fraction of those are lucky enough to have assurance populations in captivity. Setting up ex situ programs isn't possible, necessary, or desired for all threatened species, but for some it could help or even save them (ex: Kihansi spray toad, Panamanian golden frog, Partula snails, Bali mynas, Guam rail & kingfisher, addax, etc). With that in mind, what are some species that would make good candidates for new ex situ breeding programs? Surely there are many threatened amphibians and invertebrates that we could develop assurance populations for with minimal space and resources, but I am curious about specifically what species would be the most feasible options and which would be of the highest priority.

 

I don't think of this topic too much, so great idea! One invertebrate that's always struck me for such a program is the gooty sapphire tarantula, Poecilotheria metallica. Small native range, critically endangered, and readily available. It even has appeal to the public through its cool color and the fact that it's a tarantula, which are well-known.

 

Ironically enough, this is precisely the species that inspired me to write this thread! Great minds think alike?

A program is actually in the works for this species in both Europe and North America; in the EAZA there is a studbook program (ESB) for it (established recently; 2015, I think?), and in the AZA it is currently a Candidate Program.

 

Not a separate species but what about leopard subspecies such as Arabian leopards or Persian leopards? Or endangered wolf subspecies like Indian or Arabian wolves? What about eastern lowland, Cross River, or mountain gorillas?

As far as a separate species it seems that Lear's macaws would be a good candidate.

 

I would love to see Arabian leopards at zoos in the American desert. As for Persian leopards, there are a few in Europe (Parc Felins breeds them) but the only place in USA that wants to breed (Exotic Feline Breeding Compound) could not get any other American zoos to join in.

 

While we're talking about leopards, Javan leopards are another subspecies that might stand to benefit (maybe Indonesia is doing this already?)

I was going to suggest Lake Titicaca frog; turns out there have been captive breeding efforts ongoing in South America since 2010 and Denver received a group of them last year! Dying Breed? Zoo Toils to Save Strange 'Scrotum Frog'

Perhaps mantella frogs from Madagascar would make good candidates? Or the El Hierro giant lizard? Does anyone know if Australia has a captive program for swift parrots?

Another possible mammal species would be Javan slow loris. It is critically endangered, we have husbandry experience with other slow loris species, and rescued/confiscated individuals could potentially serve as founders for a captive population.

 

Fish: giant catfish from the Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers could be candidates. With the Shedd having recently received ~100 confiscated individuals, perhaps we will see a breeding program in the future.

Does anyone know if European eels have been successfully bred in captivity? There appears to be a group researching ways to replicate their long-distance traveling behavior in a captive setting, but I can't find information on whether there are yet any promising results.

 

-Side-stripped palm pit viper
-Golden lancehead
-Ethiopian mountain adder
-Rungwe bush viper
-Indochinese spitting cobra
-Fiji-short crested (not crested) iguana (Brachylophus bulabula) (7 holding zoos in Europe, perhaps with around 25 individual animals);

-(African) forest elephant
-Eastern lowland gorilla
-Ethiopian wolf
-South central black rhino (that I think in the near future, all black rhinos subspecies will be consumed into single subspecies);
-West African giraffe

 

There have been two projects with the European eel in terms of captive-breeding (as much for aquaculture purposes as conservation) - first was Pro-Eel that ended in March 2015 and followed by Eel-Hatch that will run until September 2017. I'm not sure how successful it has been, but there are certainly pictures of eggs and newly-hatched larvae on the websites, so there may have been some success.

http://www.pro-eel.eu/
Home - EEL-HATCH

As for species I would like to see represented in new ex-situ programs (I have tried to select animals that are not already kept):

- Dracula ant Adetomyrma venatrix - Another member of the genus, Adetomyrma goblin, has been kept at the California Academy of Sciences and so knowledge of their care and breeding does exist; they could be a species that potentially any zoo could keep as ants are hardly space-hungry animals and because they are Critically Endangered and have little chance of dispersing by themselves (because new queens lack wings).

- Maltese skate Leucoraja melitensis - Other members of the genus such as winter and cuckoo rays have been bred in aquaria before and so the reproductive habits of this species should be quite similar; they are apparently restricted to a single small area now and this species could be a flagship species for shark and ray conservation in the Mediterranean Sea, which is fast reaching crisis point.

- Bourlon's genet Genetta bourloni - Very similar species like the pardine genet are slowly spreading through European collections and seem to be fairly straightforward to keep; they could also again be an ideal flagship species for the endemic small carnivores of the Guinean lowland rainforests that may not be as easy or necessary to build up numbers of in captivity (Johnston's genet, Liberian mongoose, Leighton's oyan).

All three of the species I have chosen are not on the IUCN Captive Breeding recommendations list which also obviously contains hundreds of good candidates (a good number of which already have programs available for them):
IUCN Red List Captive Breeding Recommendations | Conservation Breeding Specialist Group

 

I agree with the forest elephant and Ethiopian wolf. The West African Giraffe is pretty rare isn't it?

 

Yes, according to the Wikipedia (which many consider not a reliable source), this subspecies of the northern giraffe, is the rarest with only 400 individuals remaining in the southwestern Niger. Its closest captive relatives are the Kordofan and Rothschild's giraffe (which are too subspecies of the northern giraffe). It should be easy to keep it in captivity, since its closest relatives are breeding well in captivity.

 

Not so much a particular species but the labyrinth fish found in the peat swamps of Malaysia and Indonesia are almost certainly threatened and a proper breeding programme would be extremely useful. These fish are small and probably have poor dispersal capacity, so the chance that the apparently widespread forms represent multiple cryptic species must be very high. Many are at least occasionally bred by hobbyists so most of the work world be administrative in nature.

 

The Ethiopian wolf is a species that has been evaluated for a captive breeding program. For now they are holding off and focusing on in situ conservation, but if its deemed necessary I'm sure zoos in both Europe and N. America would take the initiative.

@Nikola Chavkosk: Why do you think black rhino subspecies will all be combined in the future? Do you mean that we will no longer recognize subspecies or that all of them will end up being interbred with each other?

@DesertRhino150: Thanks for the eel info, and also for that list! I did not realize that existed. I will now be reading it if anyone needs me...

 

I suppose, that if they won't be combined in one subspecies, at least there will be a reclassification of the subspecies, as the example with the giraffes, tigers, cheetahs, etc., because in the past subspecies status were given due to geographic differences in distribution, and not after survey of the genetics. I don't see any significant differences in pictures, between the Eastern and South-central black rhinoceros. I yet, to see a black rhino in person, however.
Have you seen both Eastern and South-central black rhino in the U.S. (there are at least 30 south-central rhinos in the U.S., and at least 80 Easterns), and if yes, is there a particular difference except maybe the size between the two?

 

Fair enough. I can't find anything about genetic comparisons between the subspecies, so perhaps that does need to be reviewed. I do know that they are sometimes referred to as "ecotypes" and that there are minor physical differences (like straighter or more curved horns), but I'm not sure that a layperson would be able to tell them apart. I'm not even sure if I've seen both subspecies, as zoos in the US typically only display them as D. bicornis without any subspecies notation, and I definitely don't know the types well enough to distinguish them myself.

 

In the Netherlands several institutes and universities are still working on this and have reached minnor succes sofar. They use several kinds of hormones and use methodes which where developed by Japanese researchers which succesfully bred the Japanese eel in captivity.
Hopefully some large-scale breeding-methods can be developed and in this way save this threatened species !

 

@Coelacanth18 See:

Extinctions, genetic erosion and conservation options for the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

 

@Giant Panda Thanks for linking that. I noticed that paper when I was looking but (foolishly, in retrospect) did not take a good look because I thought it was chiefly about genetic diversity and didn't realize that it also contained a lot of investigation into taxonomic divisions and ESUs. It seems obvious from their findings that there are observable genetic differences between the populations, but it will be interesting to see if and how that affects our taxonomy for the species (especially since the paper was only published two months ago and claims to be the first genetic survey of its kind for this species). Seems like more subspecies is a more likely outcome than consolidation into one subspecies.

 

The last sentence of the paper says: ''We took this approach as some extant populations contain a mixture of members of different mtDNA haplogroups and nDNA populations'' - isn't this a suggestion that the populations are admixture and that the few specific haplogroups in some populations are not enough for defining a particular subspecies?

The ''Eastern'' black rhinoceros genetics were more diverse, and diversity decreasing toward endpoints (south-west, south, central, Africa) of distributions of the extant populations in Africa.

 

Some interesting notes from the IUCN Captive Breeding Recommendations:

- A lot of coral species listed on there. This makes sense, because you could hypothetically grow countless colonies in tanks and then transplant them back into their marine environment (assuming of course that ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures are reversed, which is unlikely to happen in the near future).
- There is a suspicious paucity of reptile species, especially considering the high proportion of Asian chelonians that are facing extinction. Ex situ conservation actually seems to work pretty well for turtles and tortoises, since they produce large numbers of offspring, don't take up much space individually, mix well with other species, and individuals can live for very long periods of time.
- The muriquis (woolly spider monkeys) are listed; I've wondered before if they would make good candidates, since they are held in at least a few Brazilian zoos.
- No insects on this list at all
- Plenty of amphibian species, especially from Atelopus, Plectrohyla, and Eleutherodactylus.