As nature reels towards a hotter, drier, harsher future, new conservation tools – seed banks and frozen zoos, gene editing and assisted gene flow – hold promise to help struggling animal and plant populations.
As nature reels towards a hotter, drier, harsher future, new conservation tools – seed banks and frozen zoos, gene editing and assisted gene flow – hold promise to help struggling animal and plant populations. The catch: New approaches need to incorporate the strengths the species have evolved for their local environments.
A group of biologists in BioScience make a case that innovations in understanding local adaptation now can be powerful tools to create second chances when habitats are challenged by changing climates.
Biologists have gotten better at identifying the winning strategies species have evolved to adapt to their environments. This has led to new advancements that can capitalize on those strategies by understanding the underlying genetics that allow a creature to tolerate changing climate. This information can be used to target individuals for cryopreservation or banking – freezing the seeds of plants or cells of animals that are resilient to heat stress or at greatest risk of extinction due to changing climates.
Read more at Michigan State University
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