Susceptibility to a sexually transmitted disease in a wild koala population shows heritable genetic variance but no inbreeding depression.

The koala, one of the most iconic Australian wildlife species, is facing several concomitant threats that are driving population declines. Some threats are well known and have clear methods of prevention (e.g.

Testing the effectiveness of genetic monitoring using genetic non-invasive sampling.

Effective conservation requires accurate data on population genetic diversity, inbreeding, and genetic structure. Increasingly, scientists are adopting genetic non-invasive sampling (gNIS) as a cost-effective population-wide genetic monitoring approach. gNIS has, however, known limitations which may impact the accuracy of downstream genetic analyses.

Inbreeding and disease avoidance in a free-ranging koala population.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are increasing globally, forcing surviving species into small, isolated populations. Isolated populations typically experience heightened inbreeding risk and associated inbreeding depression and population decline; although individuals in these populations may mitigate these risks through inbreeding avoidance strategies. For koalas, as dietary specialists already under threat in the northern parts of their range, increased habitat fragmentation and associated inbreeding costs are of great conservation concern.

Developing noninvasive methodologies to assess koala population health through detecting Chlamydia from scats.

Wildlife diseases are a recognized driver of global biodiversity loss, have substantial economic impacts, and are increasingly becoming a threat to human health. Disease surveillance is critical but remains difficult in the wild due to the substantial costs and potential biases associated with most disease detection methods. Noninvasive scat surveys have been proposed as a health monitoring methodology to overcome some of these limitations.

Fresh is best: Accurate SNP genotyping from koala scats.

Maintaining genetic diversity is a crucial component in conserving threatened species. For the iconic Australian koala, there is little genetic information on wild populations that is not either skewed by biased sampling methods (e.g.