#Southern white rhino facts full#

Now, with the help of better tools and techniques for studying the genomes of creatures in the wild, researchers are discovering the full extent of how much the genetic dynamics within and among those populations can affect how resiliently a species can evolve and adapt to changing conditions over time. They’ve long understood how geography and ecological variations often partition species into subspecies or other small distinct populations of individuals who are more closely related to one another than to outsiders. In recent years, biologists have developed a deeper understanding of how the relationship between genetic diversity and population structure can influence the fate of a species. That’s why the new notion is: We really want to save the genetic structure of the species, these different populations - subspecies - that have unique characteristics at the genomic level.”

When you talk about species, you’re not considering the whole evolutionary potential of all the different groups that make up that species. “But that’s not enough if you think about it. “Before, people would say, we need to save the species,” Steiner explained. They want more northern white rhinos, and mixing in genes from southern white rhino males just won’t do. They’re working to turn stem cells collected from the remaining females into embryos for in vitro fertilization.

Nevertheless, ever since Sudan’s death, Cynthia Steiner, an associate director in conservation genetics for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and her colleagues have gone to great lengths to try to reboot the northern subspecies. White rhinos as a species aren’t even endangered. More than 10,000 white rhinos are still left in the southern subspecies. Northern white rhinos are just a distinct subset, or subspecies, of white rhino. The moment made headlines, and the world lamented the high-profile extinction.īut it wasn’t a true species extinction event. But Sudan’s death ended any hope of those females breeding naturally and rendered the northern white rhino effectively extinct. He wasn’t the only remaining northern white rhino because three females in protective captivity survived him. In March 2018 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, surrounded by his devoted keepers, Sudan the northern white rhino breathed his last.

Southern white rhino facts