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Edwards, T., & Berry, K. H. , Is the captive population of agassiz’s desert tortoise an appropriate reservoir for conservation? - abstract. Unpublished paper presented at Program and Abstracts of the Tenth Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles. 
Added by: Admin (06 Jan 2014 18:22:46 UTC)
Resource type: Conference Paper
BibTeX citation key: Edwards2012
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Categories: General
Keywords: Genetik - genetics, Gopherus agassizii, Habitat - habitat, Nordamerika - North America, Schildkröten - turtles + tortoises, Testudinidae
Creators: Berry, Edwards
Collection: Program and Abstracts of the Tenth Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles
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Abstract     
Testudinidae Agassiz’s Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) pose a unique situation as a threatened species because within their native range, they are commonly kept as pets. However, the utility of the captive population for conservation is questionable since Desert Tortoises exhibit genetic differentiation throughout their range and can hybridize with other Gopherus species. We collected samples from 131 captive Desert Tortoises from three desert communities: two in California (Ridgecrest, Kern County and Joshua Tree, San Bernardino County) and the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (Las Vegas, Clark County) in Nevada. We tested all samples for 25 short tandem repeats and sequenced a 1,109 bp portion of the ND3/ND4 region of the mitochondrial genome. We compared captive genotypes to a database of 1,258 Gopherus samples, including 656 wild-caught G. agassizii representing northern and southern portions of their range. We conducted population assignment tests to determine the genetic origins of the captive individuals. The three captive populations were different from each other in the proportion of individuals that were assigned to the same geographic region as the community from which they were sampled. From the two southern California desert communities, three of ninety-one individuals in our data set were assigned to the more distant northern Mojave Desert region and one individual was identified as being a Morafka’s Desert Tortoise, G. morafkai. Two of thirty-nine individuals from the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center were assigned to the southern portion of the range. Our data suggest that captive tortoises in the Mojave Desert cannot be presumed to have a genealogical affiliation to wild tortoises in their geographic proximity. However, in comparison to a similar assessment of captive tortoise in Arizona, this study had many fewer examples of hybridization and interstate translocation, perhaps as a result of demographic differences of the human communities sampled. These findings suggest that the captive tortoise population cannot be assumed to be an appropriate reservoir for conservation and that precautions should be taken before considering the release of captive tortoises into the wild as a management tool for recovery.
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