BACKGROUND Differences among species in their ability to adapt to environmental change
threaten biodiversity, human health, food security, and natural resource availability …

Recent research in humans, livestock, and wildlife using high-throughput next-generation
sequencing (NGS) has identified that resident microbiota play an essential role in disease …

The agricultural world today is dominated by a few domesticated mammal species, that is,
animals modified from their wild ancestors through selective breeding in captivity for traits …

Captive breeding has become an important tool in species conservation programmes.
Current management strategies for ex situ populations are based on theoretical models …

Abstract The Convention on Biological Diversity's target of halting extinctions by 2020 is less
than a handful of years away. Captive, or ex situ, management has long been cited as …

Impacts of climate change are apparent in natural systems around the world. Many species
are and will continue to struggle to persist in their current location as their preferred …

Background Rescuing amphibian diversity is an achievable conservation challenge.
Disease mitigation is one essential component of population management. Here we assess …

For the last 30 years, cooperative management of irreplaceable animal populations in zoos
and aquariums has focused primarily on the goal of minimizing genetic decay within defined …

Population viability analysis (PVA) has been used for three decades to assess threats and
evaluate conservation options for wildlife populations. What has been learned from PVA on …

Conservation breeding programs such as zoos play a major role in preventing extinction, but
their sustainability may be impeded by neutral and adaptive population genetic change …