New research published on Wednesday suggests the Tasmanian devil may be evolving to fight the devil facial tumor disease.
University of Tasmania Associate Professor Menna Jones was part of an international research team that made the discovery, which was published in Nature Communications on Wednesday.
“This new work that’s come out shows that devils are evolving in response to be able to fight the transmissible cancer that has been killing them in the wild,” Ms Jones said.
The genetic adaption has been identified in three vastly separate populations of devils that have been affected by the disease.
Researchers found that since the appearance of the disease in case populations genes related to cancer and immune function have consistently changed, suggesting the devil may be evolving a resistance to the transmissible cancer.
Ms Jones said the finding is significant.
“I think these results are really a game-shifter, they’re really ground breaking ... For the last eight years we expected that the devils would evolve to overcome the cancer and effectively save themselves and this is the first confirmed evidence of that happening,” she said.
While evolution is generally thought of as a slow process, the evolution seen in devils to resist DFTD has been rapid.
“This has happened incredibly fast in devils ... we have seen these changes in devils in four to six generations,” she said. Given a devil generation is only two years, that means these changes are occurring in as little as eight to 12 years after the disease enters a population.
The research comes a day after 33 devils were released in a recovery trial at Stony Head in the North East. All the devils were immunised with a trial vaccine. In an effort to reduce devil deaths there were extensive preparations prior to the release. These include fitting 25 of the devils with GPS collars so they can be tracked and located for two, six and 12 week check-ups.
Save the Tasmanian Devil team leader monitoring and management Sam Fox said the release went well.
“All the devils left within an hour of getting dark and we have been following the devils overnight with their GPS collars,” Ms Fox said.
“They all looked like they were moving around and doing well.”
A DPIPWE spokesperson said it was important to remember the Save the Tasmanian Devil program worked to address other threats than just the DFTD. They said while the new research is encouraging, it is still preliminary.
“A lot more research would need to be done to understand if this is a true evolutionary response.”
