By Beth
Timmins BBC News
30 March
2019
There's
fresh hope for the survival of endangered Tasmanian devils after large numbers
were killed off by facial tumours.
The world's
largest carnivorous marsupials have been battling Devil Facial Tumour Disease
(DFTD) for over 20 years.
But
researchers have found the animals' immune system to be modifying to combat the
assault.
And
according to an international team of scientists from Australia, UK, US and
France, the future for the devils is now looking brighter.
"In the
past, we were managing devil populations to avoid extinction. Now, we are
progressively moving to an adaptive management strategy, enhancing those
selective adaptations for the evolution of devil/DFTD coexistence,"
explains Dr Rodrigo Hamede, from the University of Tasmania.
First
discovered in north-eastern Tasmania in 1996, the disease has since spread
across 95% of the species' range, with local population losses of over 90%.
Dr Hamede's
team has been collecting epidemiological evidence over the past 10 years. The
group has plotted scenarios based on current infection rates in the wild,
and in their
forecast for the next 100 years, 57% of scenarios see DFTD fading out and 22%
predict coexistence.
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