Tasmanian devil pays for climate change

Climate change, not disease or hunting, could be the main cause of a decline in the numbers of Tasmanian devils, according to researchers in Australia.

The team from the University of Tasmania discovered that the devils' low genetic diversity and previous population declines were driven by climate change rather than hunting or a rampant facial tumor disease, as previously thought.

Their study, which examined the largest ever set of genetic data for Tasmanian devils, found that the marsupials have lived with low genetic diversity for thousands of years, having suffered two huge population declines that wiped out around 80 percent of animals in the past 50,000 years.