Your opinion on reviving extinct species

[Thomas Landrain]

Hello guys,

I need your assistance. I have been invited to give a talk in a big conference in Cambridge (UK) as a representative of young professionals ;) on how Synthetic Biology and Conservation can be linked together to save or improve the biodiversity on our planet. I'd be very interested in your opinion on the following questions:

- if you were to revive one single species, which one should it be?

- would you welcome such initiative or condemn it?

- what application or abuse can you imagine of such a technology?

I have compiled those questions and more in this web interface. Don't hesitate to use it and share it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BBYLKLQ

Thanks a lot!!

The conference is organized by the Wildlife Conservation Society. You can find a description of it on this link:

http://e.wcs.org/site/PageNavigator/Cambridge.html

Thomas

[Mega]

Hi!

I'd like to revive Nenderthals, because they have just another point of view, their brain may find different solutions to uor problems. 

And because, we probably made them extinct. So we have the moral obligation to de-extinct them. Biological diversity. 

Revive the mammoth and introduce it to iceland, Sibira, etc where it is ought to regulate growth of young trees vs. grass. 

[Mega]

Already completed the survey, but we could discuss about the ethics here ;) 

[Thomas Landrain]

Thanks Mega for your input. Yes I think this is topic especially suited for DIYbio enthusiasts! :)

After the conference is done, I will work on compiling the answers and the feedback I will get on them on this list.

Don't hesitate to share the link to the survey outside this list. Opinion from non DIybio folks are of interest here too :)

Thanks

Thomas

On Mar 27, 2013, at 9:39, Mega <masters...@gmail.com> wrote:

Already completed the survey, but we could discuss about the ethics here ;) 

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[Ashley Heath]

T. rex of course!

[Thomas Landrain]

I get the T.rex answer a lot :)

However we won't probably be ever able to get T.rex DNA in sufficiently high amount and quality.

Please use this survey page to compile your thoughts and answers (this is anonymous):

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BBYLKLQ

I'll be sharing all the raw data of the survey on this list after the conference has happened, which will be on the 11th of April.

Spoiler:

According to this survey we almost get half people welcoming such initiative and being ready to buy and pet a member of a de-extinct species (i.e. a Dodo) !

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[Alan Durbin]

I would fully support it.  Megafauna today are key to ecosystem functioning today (google "ecosystem engineers") where they are still extant, and places where they are missing (almost everywhere outside of Africa and tropical Asia) you find plants without dispersers (google Ghosts of Evolution) and generally unnatural plant communities that have arisen in the absence of ecosystem engineers (i.e., there really isn't any wilderness left, it's all been reshaped by recent extinction).

Further, people are the ones who killed off the megafauna.  High resolution, quantitative records have clarified the timing and order of human arrival, megafaunal extinction, and the subsequent changes in vegetation and fire regimes, all during periods of stable climate- evidence that humans were both necessary and sufficient to induce megafaunal extinctions:

North America : http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5956/1100.short

Australia: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6075/1483.abstract

Australia, North American, & elsewhere http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6075/1452.full

.  

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[Cathal Garvey]

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There's also the possibility that Trex couldn't survive anymore; there
are theories about higher oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere
allowing for growth of larger animals in the Dino eras.

Not sure I buy that, though, as animals today probably don't even make
use of all the oxygen available to them as it is, and ability to
absorb more oxygen has more to do with blood mechanics than
environmental saturation. Hell, look at Blue Whales.

My opinion is that reviving species for fun is a monumental waste of
money, science and engineering power that could be better spent
preventing the immanent extinction of remaining keystone species. So
if you have the money to revive a T-Rex, please FFS spend that money
engineering whales and dolphins to make them inedible instead so the
Japanese whaling fleets and Faroe islanders will leave them alone.

For that matter, consider making *all* keystone fish species
unpalatably horrible-tasting, so people will stop fishing full-stop,
before the ocean ecosystem collapses completely.

Save "reviving extinct species" for when we have no existing species
left to preserve!

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[Mega]

I heard the same with temperature. there are thise beautiful flying insects who were up to more than a meter in length.
and also trex was used to 42°C.

Bigger bodies means big surface, which in turn means more energy for heating required if atmospheric temperatures are low....

[Cathal Garvey]

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Technically it's the opposite; the *ratio* of body mass to surface
area tends to decrease as an animal grows larger, so it's easier to
stay warm in cold climates if you are bigger, provided you can find
enough food to pay for the larger size.

That's why Siberian tigers are the largest Tiger species, and probably
why Polar Bears are so Fing large, too. It's an interesting tidbit
when you consider Elephants, whose bodies are perfectly shaped for
retaining heat due to an accident of evolution, but who live in very
hot climates; they use their ears to dump heat, so if you cut off
their ears they'll die (and you'll go to hell).

However, the energy cost for just being a gigantic T-Rex is still
going to be pretty large, so you'll have to feed it plenty of wasteful
meat feedstock just to have an amusing feathered giant in your
Jurassic Park. Meanwhile all the important keystone species that
aren't as "awesome" are going extinct and nobody'll pay to revive them
because Michael Crichton never wrote a book about it.

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[David Murphy]

For sentients like neandertals there's a whole extra level of ethical problems and guilt doesn't really work as a good reason.

It'd be like trying to atone for the genocide of native americans by cloning them from cells obtained from old burial grounds.
Hell we're not even particularly good at cloning things close to a human level. We'd probably turn out a a hundred sins-against-nature physically and mentally messed up neanderthals for every healthy one.

for non sentients it's not really a big ethical problem, just a practical one. 
At the moment it's terribly expensive and probably not worth it at all as Cathal said.
But 50 years from now it might be childs-play so doing some groundwork: collecting lots of tissue/gammete samples from every endangered species we can find and sticking them in the equivilent of a seed bank is both cheap and sensible.

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[Nathan McCorkle]

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/10/bring-back-the-shasta-ground-sloth/#more-9741

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Landrain <thomas....@gmail.com> wrote:

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