From Discovery to Preservation: The Changing Face of Tasmanian Devil Research

Tasmanian devils are globally renowned for their calamitous decline over the past 30 years due to two contagious clonal cancers and the heroic efforts of researchers, conservationists, and the community to bring them back from the brink of extinction. Scientific investigations into the world's largest marsupial carnivore commenced in the early 1900s. This systematic review follows the changing face of scientific research into Tasmanian devils. It reflects on how science moved from biological investigations in the 1950s and 1960s, to ecological studies in the 1980s and 1990s, to the discovery of the first clonal cancer in 1996, followed by a flurry of work to understand the disease and develop a vaccine, establish and manage an insurance program, and then roll out a translocation program that alleviated small population pressures and maintained devils in the wild. Over this period, technology has changed rapidly, from camera traps to satellite collars and microsatellites to whole-genome sequencing. Through this, societal support for the species has never wavered, and the species persists in the wild.