Temporal Monitoring of the Floreana Island Galapagos Giant Tortoise Captive Breeding Program.

Captive breeding programs benefit from genetic analyses that identify relatedness between individuals, assign parentage to offspring, and track levels of genetic diversity. Monitoring these parameters across breeding cycles is critical to the success of a captive breeding program as it allows conservation managers to iteratively evaluate and adjust program structure. However, in practice, genetic tracking of breeding outcomes is rarely conducted.

The Galapagos giant tortoise Chelonoidis phantasticus is not extinct.

The status of the Fernandina Island Galapagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus) has been a mystery, with the species known from a single specimen collected in 1906. The discovery in 2019 of a female tortoise living on the island provided the opportunity to determine if the species lives on. By sequencing the genomes of both individuals and comparing them to all living species of Galapagos giant tortoises, here we show that the two known Fernandina tortoises are from the same lineage and distinct from all others.

Removal of Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase-Producing , ST98, in Water for Human Consumption by Black Ceramic Water Filters in Low-Income Ecuadorian Highlands.

Fecal contamination in natural water sources is a common problem in low-income countries. Several health risks are associated with unprotected water sources, such as gastrointestinal infections caused by parasites, viruses, and bacteria. Moreover, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in water sources have become an increasing problem worldwide.

A new lineage of Galapagos giant tortoises identified from museum samples.

The Galapagos Archipelago is recognized as a natural laboratory for studying evolutionary processes. San Cristóbal was one of the first islands colonized by tortoises, which radiated from there across the archipelago to inhabit 10 islands. Here, we sequenced the mitochondrial control region from six historical giant tortoises from San Cristóbal (five long deceased individuals found in a cave and one found alive during an expedition in 1906) and discovered that the five from the cave are from a clade that is distinct among known Galapagos giant tortoises but closely related to the species from Española and Pinta Islands.

Galapagos land iguanas as ecosystem engineers.

Background: Declines of large-bodied herbivorous reptiles are well documented, but the consequences for ecosystem function are not. Understanding how large-bodied herbivorous reptiles engineer ecosystems is relevant given the current interest in restoration of tropical islands where extinction rates are disproportionately high and reptiles are prominent as herbivores.

Methods: In this study, we measured the ecosystem-level outcomes of long-term quasi-experiment represented by two adjacent islands within the Galapagos Archipelago, one with and the other without Galapagos land iguanas (), large-bodied herbivores known to feed on many plant species.