↓ Skip to main content

PLOS

Local Extinction and Unintentional Rewilding of Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis) on a Desert Island

Overview of attention for article published in PLOS ONE, March 2014
Altmetric Badge

Mentioned by

news
7 news outlets
blogs
2 blogs
policy
1 policy source
twitter
15 X users
reddit
1 Redditor

Readers on

mendeley
101 Mendeley
Title
Local Extinction and Unintentional Rewilding of Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis) on a Desert Island
Published in
PLOS ONE, March 2014
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0091358
Pubmed ID
Authors

Benjamin T. Wilder, Julio L. Betancourt, Clinton W. Epps, Rachel S. Crowhurst, Jim I. Mead, Exequiel Ezcurra

Abstract

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) were not known to live on Tiburón Island, the largest island in the Gulf of California and Mexico, prior to the surprisingly successful introduction of 20 individuals as a conservation measure in 1975. Today, a stable island population of ∼500 sheep supports limited big game hunting and restocking of depleted areas on the Mexican mainland. We discovered fossil dung morphologically similar to that of bighorn sheep in a dung mat deposit from Mojet Cave, in the mountains of Tiburón Island. To determine the origin of this cave deposit we compared pellet shape to fecal pellets of other large mammals, and extracted DNA to sequence mitochondrial DNA fragments at the 12S ribosomal RNA and control regions. The fossil dung was 14C-dated to 1476-1632 calendar years before present and was confirmed as bighorn sheep by morphological and ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis. 12S sequences closely or exactly matched known bighorn sheep sequences; control region sequences exactly matched a haplotype described in desert bighorn sheep populations in southwest Arizona and southern California and showed subtle differentiation from the extant Tiburón population. Native desert bighorn sheep previously colonized this land-bridge island, most likely during the Pleistocene, when lower sea levels connected Tiburón to the mainland. They were extirpated sometime in the last ∼1500 years, probably due to inherent dynamics of isolated populations, prolonged drought, and (or) human overkill. The reintroduced population is vulnerable to similar extinction risks. The discovery presented here refutes conventional wisdom that bighorn sheep are not native to Tiburón Island, and establishes its recent introduction as an example of unintentional rewilding, defined here as the introduction of a species without knowledge that it was once native and has since gone locally extinct.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 15 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 101 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 2 2%
Spain 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Unknown 97 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 21 21%
Student > Bachelor 18 18%
Student > Master 16 16%
Researcher 15 15%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 4%
Other 15 15%
Unknown 12 12%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 50 50%
Environmental Science 20 20%
Social Sciences 5 5%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 3 3%
Medicine and Dentistry 2 2%
Other 9 9%
Unknown 12 12%