Survival of the most variable As more species become highly threatened because of human activity, there has been an increasing push to understand how best to reintroduce or translocate individuals from wild or captive populations. Suggestions have varied from choosing individuals from the most environmentally similar regions to choosing those that might have the best ability to adapt to new environments. Scott et al. used long-term data collected during translocations of Mojave Desert tortoises, including animals formerly kept as pets, to test these questions. Although the overall rates of survival for all tortoises at the site (both reintroduced and native) were extremely low, translocated individuals with the highest heterozygosity survived at much higher rates than those determined to be similar to the target population. Science, this issue p. 1086 High heterozygosity improves survival of reintroduced Mojave desert tortoises. Anthropogenic environmental modification is placing as many as 1 million species at risk of extinction. One management action for reducing extinction risk is translocation of individuals to locations from which they have disappeared or to new locations where biologists hypothesize they have a good chance of surviving. To maximize this survival probability, the standard practice is to move animals from the closest possible populations that contain presumably related individuals. In an empirical test of this conventional wisdom, we analyzed a genomic dataset for 166 translocated desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) that either survived or died over a period of two decades. We used genomic data to infer the geographic origin of translocated tortoises and found that individual heterozygosity predicted tortoise survival, whereas translocation distance or geographic unit of origin did not. Our results suggest a relatively simple indicator of the likelihood of a translocated individual’s survival: heterozygosity.

中文翻译：

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个体杂合性预测受威胁沙漠陆龟的易位成功

变异最大的生存 随着越来越多的物种因人类活动而受到高度威胁，人们越来越多地了解如何最好地从野生或圈养种群中重新引入或转移个体。建议各不相同，从选择环境最相似地区的个体到选择可能最有能力适应新环境的个体。斯科特等人。使用在莫哈韦沙漠陆龟（包括以前作为宠物饲养的动物）易地期间收集的长期数据来测试这些问题。尽管该地点所有陆龟（重新引入的和本地的）的总体存活率极低，但杂合度最高的易地个体的存活率远高于确定与目标种群相似的个体。科学，这个问题 p。1086 高杂合度提高了重新引入的莫哈韦沙漠陆龟的存活率。人为环境改变使多达 100 万个物种面临灭绝的风险。减少灭绝风险的一项管理措施是将个体转移到它们已经消失的地方或生物学家假设它们有很大生存机会的新地方。为了最大限度地提高这种生存概率，标准做法是将动物从可能包含可能相关个体的最接近的可能种群中转移。在对这种传统智慧的实证检验中，我们分析了 166 只易地沙漠陆龟 (Gopherus agassizii) 的基因组数据集，这些陆龟在 20 年内存活或死亡。我们使用基因组数据来推断易位陆龟的地理起源，发现个体杂合性可以预测陆龟的存活率，而易位距离或地理起源单位则不能。我们的结果提出了一个相对简单的指示易位个体存活可能性的指标：杂合性。