Royal Zoological Society of Scotland

Abstract The rapid decline of wild populations has resulted in complete extinction of many species. In some cases, this outcome has been avoided through the establishment of ex situ conservation breeding populations. These have the aim of safeguarding the survival of the species and ultimately their reintroduction to the wild. In the case of Partula tree snails, conservation work spanning 4 decades has included ex situ breeding and reintroduction attempts. Most Partula tree snails of French Polynesia are categorized as Extinct on the IUCN Red List as a result of the introduction of invasive predators. Ten species survive only in ex situ conservation breeding centres and reintroduction attempts have been underway since 2015. In 2024, a wild population of Partula tohiveana was located, formed as a result of reintroductions to Moorea Island over the previous decade. This is the first Extinct in the Wild invertebrate species to have been re-established through coordinated, interdisciplinary ex situ and in situ conservation actions.

ABSTRACT Hybridization has long been a central topic in evolution and conservation. Recent developments in genomics have increased the ability to detect hybridization, defined here as breeding between species, subspecies or distinct populations, and assess levels of introgression between taxa. For decades, hybrids directly or indirectly created and/or spread by humans have typically been considered as threats to conservation, reflected by current regional and national environmental policies that focus largely on potential negative effects. In the context of the latest global conservation policy goals, and increasing evidence of historic natural hybridization events, we call for science‐based, reflective and context‐dependent management of hybrids, applying a framework that shifts focus towards measuring the impact of hybrids, and assessing potential risks and benefits. Alongside demographic and ecological information, it is crucial for impact assessments to consider genetic information, and conservation management of hybrids needs to be more case‐specific.

Understanding the reproductive biology of giant pandas is crucial for their breeding success and conservation. Pregnancy monitoring, however, is challenging due to delayed implantation and obligatory pseudopregnancy, which limits the effectiveness of traditional immunoassays (IA). To remedy this, we combined polar metabolomics and steroidomics to enable a comprehensive view of the urinary molecular composition across six different reproductive phases spanning six pregnant and seven pseudopregnant cycles. Statistical comparisons revealed 696 discriminative features, including 174 features in the early luteal stages, well before the current pregnancy diagnostic window. Pregnant and pseudopregnant cycles showed differences in amino acid, energy, and steroid metabolism before and after CL reactivation, with androgen levels being significantly elevated in pregnant females specifically, suggesting a role in embryo implantation. Interestingly, we detected only one existing IA target metabolite, but identified other discriminative metabolites that may underlie IA signal detection. Finally, we demonstrated that classification models comprising biomarker panels may improve (early) pregnancy diagnosis with accuracies ranging from 0.763 to 1.000 across reproductive phases. These findings offer possibilities for assigning new biomarkers and optimizing IA target selection, thereby enhancing pregnancy monitoring sensitivity and reliability while improving our understanding of giant panda reproductive biology to support conservation efforts.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-19067-7.

Globally, illegal sport hunting can threaten prey populations when unregulated. Due to its covert nature, illegal sport hunting poses challenges for data collection, hindering efforts to understand the full extent of its impacts. We gathered social media data to analyze patterns of illegal sport hunting and wildlife depletion across Brazil. We collected data for 2years (2018-2020) across 5 Facebook groups containing posts depicting pictures of illegal sport hunting events of native fauna. We described and mapped these hunting events by detailing the number of hunters involved, the number of species, the mean body mass of individuals, and the number and biomass of individuals hunted per unit area, stratified by Brazilian biome. We also examined the effects of defaunation on hunting yield and composition via regression models, rank-abundance curves, and spatial interpolation. We detected 2046 illegal sport hunting posts portraying the hunting of 4658 animals (∼29t of undressed meat) across all 27 states and 6 natural biomes of Brazil. Of 157 native species targeted by hunters, 19 are currently threatened with extinction. We estimated that 1414 hunters extracted 3251kg/millionkm2. Some areas exhibited more pronounced wildlife depletion, in particular the Atlantic Forest and Caatinga biomes. In these areas, there was a shift from large mammals and reptiles to small birds as the main targeted taxa, and biomass extracted per hunting event and mean body mass across all taxonomic groups were lower than in other areas. Our results highlight that illegal sport hunting adds to the pressures of subsistence hunting and the wild meat trade on Brazil's wildlife populations. Enhanced surveillance efforts are needed to reduce illegal sport hunting levels and to develop well-managed sustainable sport hunting programs. These can support wildlife conservation and offer incentives for local communities to oversee designated sport hunting areas.

Good zoos have four aims-to conserve species, educate the public, engage in research, and provide recreation-all of which can only be achieved when underpinned by high animal welfare standards. In this paper, we share the approach that The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland's (RZSS) Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park take to animal welfare. We highlight the role that animal welfare research, in collaboration with universities, has had in enabling the zoo to take an evidence-based approach to welfare and to put findings into practice. We share the collaborative process through which we developed and piloted the current animal welfare assessment tools, how they were validated, and how they were tested for reliability as part of a long-term collaboration between the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the University of Stirling: (1) the RZSS Welfare Assessment Tool, a 50-question animal welfare assessment adapted from the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) Toolkit; and (2) the Stirling Toolkit, a package of evidence-based resources for behavioural-data collection. Our aim is to facilitate standardised, evidence-based approaches to assessing animal welfare which, when finalised, can be used collaboratively across zoos.

Simple SummaryAnteaters are insectivores, consuming diets consisting primarily of termites and ants in the wild; therefore, feeding them under human care has been a challenge and frequently leads to nutritional disorders. Through analysis of free-ranging giant anteaters’ stomach content, the findings of this study provide valuable information for optimizing anteater nutrition in zoological institutions and rehabilitation centers causing a significant impact on the welfare of the species.Using the stomach contents of 24 wild road-killed giant anteaters as proxies for their diet, we found that estimated wild diets were much lower in calcium (about ten times less) and phosphorus compared with manufactured feeds commonly fed to anteaters under human care. Indicators of soil consumption, such as ash, iron, and manganese were higher in the stomach contents than in either wild termites or manufactured diets, likely due to high levels of soil ingestion during feeding in the wild. Protein and fat levels in insects, stomach contents, and commercial diets all met carnivore recommendations. Both giant anteaters and tamanduas in managed care often develop hypercalcemia, perhaps because these taxa have an enhanced ability to retain calcium allowing them to survive on such low calcium diets. Results from this study indicate that, for anteaters in managed care, it is important to keep dietary calcium and vitamins D and K within recommended levels to prevent nutritional diseases such as hyper- and hypocalcemia and vitamin K deficiency.

Environmental change is intensifying the biodiversity crisis and threatening species across the tree of life. Conservation genomics can help inform conservation actions and slow biodiversity loss. However, more training, appropriate use of novel genomic methods and communication with managers are needed. Here, we review practical guidance to improve applied conservation genomics. We share insights aimed at ensuring effectiveness of conservation actions around three themes: (1) improving pedagogy and training in conservation genomics including for online global audiences, (2) conducting rigorous population genomic analyses properly considering theory, marker types and data interpretation and (3) facilitating communication and collaboration between managers and researchers. We aim to update students and professionals and expand their conservation toolkit with genomic principles and recent approaches for conserving and managing biodiversity. The biodiversity crisis is a global problem and, as such, requires international involvement, training, collaboration and frequent reviews of the literature and workshops as we do here.