Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

When someone hears the expression, “take one for the team,” they usually associate it with sports. When I played soccer last year, our goalie was hit full in the face by a ball that would have otherwise been a goal. Although she didn’t break anything, she had two large, black-and-blue bruises around her eyes for about a week. She probably didn’t want to go around looking like a panda, but her “taking one for the team” helped us win the game. This concept of self-sacrifice transcends the sports world and makes its way into the zoological world.

Zoos have a very complex system for keeping captive animal populations diverse and viable. All species of animals that are kept in captivity have a Species Survival Plan. The Species Survival Plan is a very specific set of guidelines to dictate how a certain animal population is going to be managed for optimal conservation of that species. For each population, there is a species coordinator, who comes up with a population management plan. Although all of the zoos in the United States are encouraged to follow this plan, participation is voluntary. The job of the species coordinator is to determine which animals should be allowed to breed. The family tree of each species is mapped out so that animal managers can best pair prospective mates together without hurting the genetic diversity of the population in captivity. The decisions of the species coordinator are made based on what is in the best interest of the animal population so that inbreeding (the mating of family members, which often leads to genetic disabilities) will not occur. Helena Fitch-Snyder, who helped us understand the inner workings of cooperative conservation, is the species coordinator for the captive loris populations.

Zoos are justifiably very proud of their animal collections. Some animals draw large crowds and have many fans. These so-called “charismatic megavertebrates” (such as tigers, orangutans, and gorillas) are the rock stars of the zoological world. Let’s say a zoo in a state far, far away had a very prized rhinoceros. People from all over flocked to see this one rhino. However, this rhino is the perfect match for a lovely bachelorette rhino in California. They are not related and would thus create more genetic diversity in the rhino species. The species coordinator for that rhino species decides that the rhino from far away would have to move to California to mate in the new spacious rhino exhibit. Although the far-away zoo might lose an important source of revenue, they would be “taking one for the team” to help preserve the rhino species. Conservation is a cooperative effort and we must all make sacrifices to be successful.

-Sarah, Real World Team

Matchmaking in Monkey Heaven!
It was in the 20th century that zoos realized it was vital to compile records of the species in their care into a master database. Having this information available to all institutions would make it easier to accomplish tasks such as finding the most suitable mate for an eligible gorilla. Over the past 20 years, the International Species Inventory System (ISIS) has successfully held animal records of all North American institutions. To keep this information current, Species Survival Plan coordinators maintain studbooks filled with records of necessary data about the members of the captive populations of the species they are in charge of. Helena Fitch-Snyder is the species coordinator for all loris species in captivity in zoos. Lorises are prosimians, the most primitive group of primates.

As a species coordinator, Ms. Fitch-Snyder has helped write long-term Species Survival Plans, which address various aspects of focal species, such as number of births, pedigree, which animals should be paired for breeding, and transfer of animals between partner institutions. These plans involve numerous zoos that work together to manage the species according to the master plan.

Part detective, part mathemetician, part matchmaker, part diplomat, the job of a species coordinator has lots of elements. The most prominent part is deciding which animals within a species should be paired for breeding. Decisions are not based on what is best for one institution; instead, breeding pairs are determined by the numbers. Species coordinators meet with representatives from zoos that have the animals (in her case, the lorises) to make the necessary decisions of pairing animals for mating, and which animals will move to other zoos, based on the following criteria: minimizing relatedness, keeping bloodlines equally represented, and breeding the rarest bloodlines. To address the issue of relatedness, a complex set of calculations is used to calculate mean kinship values; the values correspond to an individual’s relatedness to others within the captive population. A low mean kinship value means that the animal is a good candidate for breeding because their genes are not highly represented in the population. Pairing two animals with low mean kinship is the ideal. So that was the mathemetician part. The diplomat part of the job comes in when the SSP coordinator has to negotiate with the zoos about which animals are going to move. (See Sarah’s blog, above!)

Ms. Fitch-Snyder has la ongtime love of lorises. When she was a kid, she met someone who kept them as pets and even ended up with some of her own! (The laws for having this exotic species as a pet have long since changed.) Becoming a species coordinator for the lorises wasn’t a straight shot for her. She first went to Sacramento State University where she majored in nutrition. She worked in a variety of jobs not related to animals but found that her passion for observing animals, and specifically primates, was too important to ignore. She worked for four years on projects for Dr. Don Lindburg at the Zoological Society of San Diego and pursued her master’s degree in animal behavior at San Diego State University. Now a member of the Zoo’s Education Department, she maintains her position as the species coordinator and shares her life experience and broad base of knowledge with hopeful interns like us who want to follow our passion, too.

-Melissa, Animal Careers Team

Scientists Haven’t Discovered Everything Yet
According to Ms. Fitch-Snyder, gathering historical records about animals in captivity is an important part in starting a new Species Survival Plan. It is even important to know about the parentage and life history of animals that lived in zoos a hundred years ago. That’s because those animals from long ago could be the grandparents or great-grandparents of animals currently alive in zoos.

And, with the advances in genetics, it sometimes happens that a new species is “discovered” by looking at the genetics of animals and realizing that a group that we once thought were all the same are actually genetically different enough to be categorized as different species. This is what happened with the slow lorises, which originate from China and Vietnam. It turns out that there is more than one species of loris that looks like the slow loris. The Bengal loris is about the same size but has a beautiful set of dark rings around its eyes. Before the use of genetics, it was thought that this was just a color variation of the slow loris species.

Slow lorises have been kept in zoos for over a hundred years. However, pygmy lorises were not really not well known to western scientists until the late 20th century–we’re talking the 1980s! It’s exciting for scientists and the rest of us to learn more about new species. And being able to take good care of animals in zoos allows us to understand how we can protect them in the wild. Having slow lorises and pygmy lorises at the San Diego Zoo allowed animal scientists like Ms. Fitch-Snyder to use comparisons between the animals to build a good base of knowledge about these amazing little prosimians.

When it comes to conservation, it surprises me to find out that even today there are new mammal species discovered every year. Protecting the wild spaces and learning everything we can about animals is the best way for us humans to conserve the unbelievable variety of animals that share our planet.

-Marika, Conservation Team

Posted in Default, General | Link to this post

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Scroll to the end to leave a comment. Pinging is not allowed.