De-extinction: raising the dead and a number of important questions

Abstract

editorial ISSN 1948‐6596 De‐extinction: raising the dead and a number of important questions I suspect that I am like most of you who have read the recent flood of articles about de‐extinction— both in awe of the possibility of bringing back ex‐ tinct species that formerly roamed the Earth, as well as cautious about the potential pitfalls of this new plan. In many ways, it should come as no shock that we, the scientific community, are likely to share this optimism and caution about a con‐ troversial topic. It’s how we think on a daily basis. We are taught to ask questions, and seek out novel solutions, but we are also taught to be cir‐ cumspect, measured, and to utilize the precau‐ tionary principle in most situations. In the case of de‐extinction, it is clear that the scientific research that underpins this new field is some of the most exciting we’ve ever seen. Over the last decade, de‐extinction researchers have initiated the first efforts to sequence and reconstruct genomes of extinct taxa (e.g., woolly mammoth, passenger pigeon; Miller et al. 2008, Hung et al. 2013, LongNow 1 ). In addition, scien‐ tists working on de‐extinction have made ad‐ vances in selective breeding that can essentially reverse‐engineer organisms and reduce the num‐ ber of domesticated traits in an animal (e.g., selec‐ tively breeding cattle to resemble ancient Au‐ rochs; Faris et al. 2010, Switech 2013). Finally, substantial advances are being made in develop‐ mental biology and cloning as scientists search for suitable hosts in which a genetically engineered fetus can persist (Cottrell et al. 2014). Collectively, these lines of research repre‐ sent cutting‐edge projects that are logical and novel extensions for where each of these sub‐ disciplines is heading. However, advances in these fields that have expanded the possibility that re‐ searchers will actually achieve the goal of de‐ extinction have raised important ecological and ethical questions (Sandler 2013, Cottrell et al. 2014). Perhaps most importantly, this expansion into de‐extinction science has led to the question, regardless of whether we can bring back species from extinction: is this something we should actu‐ ally pursue? Predictably, trying to answer this question has only led to the development of more questions, including whether it is our responsibil‐ ity to restore species driven to extinction by hu‐ mans (Jørgensen 2013, Sandler 2013), and what the concept of ‘natural’ really means if we’re engi‐ neering organisms and raising them from the dead (Sandler 2013). A second interesting point about the ad‐ vancement of de‐extinction has been that the de‐ bate over these questions has not occurred pri‐ marily within the scientific community. Instead, the debates and discourse over this topic have seemingly been playing out in the international media and in public forums (Seddon et al. 2014). In 2013, it wasn’t Science or Nature that led the preliminary discussions that introduced these top‐ ics to the world. It was instead National Geo‐ graphic and Revive & Restore (a branch of the Long Now Foundation) that created TedxDeExtinc‐ tion 2 , a TED‐supported program about the pros and cons of de‐extinction. This exciting program, which garnered international headlines, was a major driver in pushing this field to the forefront of conservation science. Just how far we’ve come is evident from the fact that an article about de‐ extinction, entitled “The Mammoth Cometh”, was released as the cover story for the New York Times Magazine in February (Rich 2014). In this issue of Frontiers of Biogeography, we invited two expert scientists (Dr Kate Jones and Dr Josh Donlan) to discuss the pros and cons of de‐extinction and give their measured scientific opinion about the validity of this conservation ap‐ proach. What is interesting about these two pieces is that, despite the fact that the authors have differing perspectives about how and why we should utilize this technology, they both ac‐ knowledge that it is moving forward and will be a 1 http://longnow.org/revive/what‐we‐do/passenger‐pigeon/ (last accessed 10 th March 2014) 2 http://tedxdeextinction.org (last accessed 10 th March 2014) frontiers of biogeography 6.1, 2014 — © 2014 the authors; journal compilation © 2014 The International Biogeography Society