Thousands of endangered and threatened animal species may be saved by the development of insurance populations, similar to that achieved with the Tasmanian Devil.
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The genetic diversity of Tasmanian Devil insurance populations is leading researchers to call for conservation projects to adopt similar insurance programs.
A recent study found that current insurance populations of devils have similar genetic diversity to those which are currently living in the wild, and may be successfully used to boost wild populations.
University of Sydney lead author Carolyn Hogg said the genetically robust insurance population of Tasmanian Devils showed that the breeding strategies used were effective.
Dr Hogg said these strategies can be applied to other endangered species and are useful tools to address the global biodiversity crisis.
She said if threatened animal species had similar insurance programs, the resulting populations would reproduce and their offspring could be released into the wild to bolster wild species numbers.
"We have already applied it to species which are part of different safe haven fenced site populations on the Australian mainland, such as bilbies and woylies, which are an an extremely rare, small marsupial," she said.
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The study was one of the largest wildlife genetic studies in the world, and looked at the Maria Island devil insurance population, as well as others in 37 zoos.
It collected 830 wild samples from devils across 31 locations between 2012 and 2021, and 553 from insurance devil populations.
Dr Hogg said there are six genetically diverse groups of devils.
"Improving gene flow between these regions may lead to improved genetic diversity in the species," she said.
Tasmanian Devil wild populations declined by 80 per cent due to the devil facial tumour disease, but their predicted extinction did not occur.
