To
help protect a diminutive elephant researchers are taking an innovative look at
the pachyderm's genome.
The
goal is to understand the genetic diversity of pygmy elephants on the island of
Borneo. Numbering about 2,000, these babyish-looking elephants are the most
endangered subspecies of
Asian elephant. They live primarily in the Malaysian state of Sabah on
Borneo, where they are threatened by the loss and fragmentation of their
forest, often by development associated with palm oil, widely used, edible
plant oil.
"We
are interested in looking at the diversity of elephants around the whole
distribution range in Sabah," said study researcher Reeta Sharma, a
postdoctoral fellow at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal.
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