When poaching and evolution make defenses disappear

Natural selection is a slow process which, in normal times, takes generations before it confirms the appearance or disappearance of new characters.

But in Africa, poaching and ivory trafficking puts such pressure on elephants that the process is accelerated: more and more elephants are born without tusks.

Observations from current herds show that more than half of young females do not have them and that of males are getting smaller and smaller.

And scientists have come to understand some of the genetic mechanisms behind this express disappearance (

, October 22, 2021).

explains the first author of this work, Shane Campbell-Staton, evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. , who followed with his colleagues a group of 800 elephants for several years.

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