Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
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Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#2While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case.
It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#3While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
Put this in context of a lot of other species who were not able to evolve a mechanism like that.
The way I understand this there was likely a very small population of elephants already without tusks, maybe some kind of genetic defect that happened to be an advantage once you add greedy people into the mix. Or what else is possible is that there was one off mutation that produced small family of elephants that poachers wouldn't touch and these spread over decades.
Think about this, if today Covid mutated to kill almost all people but spared 0.1% with a certain gene, you would suddenly observe entire human population becoming immune to Covid.
This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding". Maybe nobody noticed the gene and it suddenly became very visible and comprising large part of population (while it declined dramatically as elephant population did). We may have missed elephants without tusks because they were just freak of nature but now they become proliferating because it becomes an advantage.
EDIT:
Selective pressure is part of evolution process, but it is not enough for evolution.
Evolution requires both mutation AND selection.
So, if the mutation was present BEFORE poachers happened, you can't really say that Mother Nature RESPONDED to poaching by evolving new mechanism. The word "response" implies causal relationship between poachers and mutation+selection of better equipped elephants. But if the mutation has already been present then there is no causal relationship and this wasn't a new mechanism.
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#4While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#5In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.”
So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I don’t see the relation. Surely, elephants themselves, cannot decide to change their genetics as a reaction to poaching.
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#6> Researchers found the number of tuskless female elephants in Mozambique increased by almost double over 30 years. This overlaps with a period of civil conflict, where armed forces slaughtered 90% of the elephant population to produce ivory. This ivory went on to finance the conflict.
People suck.
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#7While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...
> if only...
If only humans were harvested for bony growths?
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#8Honest question from someone who knows virtually nothing about chemistry or material science: is there a difference in quality between synthetic and natural ivory? If not, why is poaching even still a viable market?
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#9While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...
Beautiful, lucky, bad
Incredible, good
Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching
#10In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.” So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I…
Evolution works thanks to natural pressures -- in this case, a mutation in the gene gives an elephant no tusks, and thanks to this they are not killed by poachers. That elephant is lucky enough to survive to pass on its DNA. The recessive gene, over many generations, grows more dominant as more and more elephants "benefit" from having no tusks by not being hunted.
So the elephants aren't reacting to poaching -- the "reaction" is a random mutation that happens to align with external pressures, causing a shift in genetics for the population.