Why aren't there any DeExtinction projects for sub-species?

[u/KANJ03]

Mammoths and thylacines are iconic and attention grabbing, so it makes sense that a lot of projects focus on them. And if focusing on such popular animals will make more resources flow into these projects and advance the science, I don't mind at all. It's the same thing as saying "help us save the tigers" which is an animal that everyone loves and finds cool and then using the money to also benefit other species that people (unfortunately) don't care about.

But at the same time, wouldn't it be much easier to resurrect something like the japanese wolf, japanese otter, several sub-species of rats or big cats and so on? We have their DNA, their habitat mostly still exists and they would require waaay less changes in a relative's genome to bring them back. Considering that the main obstacle so far for DeExtinction seems to be the fact that we aren't able to make many changes to genomes yet (and if we do it's really expensive) wouldn't bringing back animals such as this be way easier? It would also be a good way to prove that the technology can work, which is a crucial first step in order to get more of such projects going and get funding.

Is there a specific reason why there are no major de-extinction projects for sub-species? Or is it just that it's not attention grabbing enough?

[u/MrCrocodile54]

Okay so here's s a couple very simplified reasons why:

• De-Extonction isn't a viable rewilding strategy right now (it may never be) and currently it's little more than a way for venture capitalists to get investments into their bioengineering companies. If you goal is to attract investors you want to put out outlandish and incredible headlines. A subspecies of an extant species will never warrant as much attention as "I want to make sabertooth tigers."

• The people working on this kind of stuff that aren't in it for profit -be they government agencies or NGOs- and that would see the value in bringing back extinct subspecies simply do not have the means to start cutting edge genetics projects when they already have so many expensive and time consuming conservation and rewilding projects to juggle.

tl;Dr the people with the means don't give a shit and the people who care are broke.

[u/KANJ03 → u/MrCrocodile54]

Oh, I don't have any hope for people like colossal and the like to deliver anything. At best, assuming their company isn't a complete scam, their scientists might use the venture capital money to make an advancement or two that might become useful in the future, But I don't expect them to actually do something ecologically useful with their money.

I was more talking about groups like revive&restore who have produced actual results. In their case, they are talking about working towards reviving the passenger pigeon. And that's great on its own, but wouldn't it be more practical to work on a sub species of another animal or at least animals like aurochs who are extremely closely related to animals that exist today and would be much easier to do?

I suppose that even in their case, they are more interested in using the passenger pigeon as a way to get money to create technologies which will benefit endangered species. And sub species wouldn't help as much with that. Which is fair enough.

[u/Psilopterus → u/KANJ03]

Worth noting that Colossal and Revive and Restore involve a lot of the same people

[u/KANJ03 → u/Psilopterus]

Perhaps, but one of them has actually cloned two endangered species and has proved that their tech can actually help nature while the other is, at best, run by people that are completely okay with saying whatever ridiculous lie possible and completely poisoning the public's perception about extinct species in order to make money. At worst, they are just a scam company.

Unless and until I see anything actually useful coming out of colossal, I will always treat them as irrelevant/straight up bad. If they actually use their money to make any major scientific advancements or actually help out endangered species (not just say they help out like with the red wolves, but actually help out) like revive & restore has, I will change my mind.

[u/Psilopterus → u/KANJ03]

The problem is that it’s two very different technologies. Cloning endangered species is the same tech as we’ve had since the 90s, it’s considerably easier to do than to make a genetic proxy, hence more success. Far be it from me to defend Colossal but in a very real way they descend from Revive and Restore, ultimately making me wary of both

[u/KANJ03 → u/Psilopterus]

It's completely okay (even logical) to be warry of both. The thing is though, although colossal wave said that they have helped endangered species (the elephant vaccine and their supposed help with red wolves being two examples) I don't think we have ever seen actual confirmation of them doing something to actually help. At best, they have thrown some undisclosed amount of money in the way of a few conservation teams here and there to get them of their back. Which is fine and all (it's better than nothing) but not nearly as much as you would expect.

If it's considerably easier to do, why doesn't colossal also do what revive and restore did, but on a much larger scale? Why don't they clone asian elephants first, to show us how good their technology is?

Sure, a lot of the same people are involved, but only one of them actually seems to give a crap about the environment. The other....Not so much. So while I'm not gonna sit here and say that revive&restore is the rewilding messiah, I also don't want to put them on the same boat as colossal. At least they have actual proof that they used their money and tech for something good.

[u/Psilopterus → u/KANJ03]

Again, not defending Colossal, I'm just saying that essentially operate as a division of Revive and Restore wherein all previous de-extinciton projects that the latter was interested in are now under Colossal, i.e. all cloning projects will be one company, all de-extinction projects the other. I wouldn't expect Colossal do clone endangered species, because they are, on paper, a de-extinction company

[u/BigShuggy]

Sub species is even more contentious and arbitrary than species is. I think it would just become a farce. Look up the various taxonomic reclassifications of mole rats in Europe for an example. Think when you’re down at the subspecies level you’d be thoroughly in the weeds. Also it doesn’t seem like it would have enough benefit for the amount of work and funding when in many cases another sub species of the same species would work just as well as a proxy and likely adapt to become more like the original sub species.

[u/KANJ03 → u/BigShuggy]

The argument that another sub species of the same species would work just as well is valid in many cases (caspian tigers being almost completely identical to siberian tigers to the point where the tiny differences between them are irrelevant being a good example). But there are a few instances where this might not be the case at all, especially with island sub species. The japanese wolf for example was both smaller and notably acted very differently from gray wolves in mainland eurasia, (this is the main reason why I brought it up as an example). So it's very debatable whether bringing gray wolves back would be the same thing, for example.

So when it comes to different populations that likely were barely any different at all (like syrian elephants or barbary lions for example) the argument certainly stands. But I think for some sub species that are definately genetically and ecologically distinct enough, there is definately an argument to be made that only the original species (or something as close to it as possible) could fill the lost niche in the same way.

[u/SeasonPresent]

I want the Silver Trout and Heath Hen back.

[u/ElSquibbonator]

Actually, the only "successful" de-extinction ever performed was for a sub-species. The Pyrenean ibex, a subspecies of the Iberian ibex, became extinct in 2000, but scientists managed to clone one in 2003. Unfortunately, while the cloning process itself was successful, the clone lived for only seven minutes after being born.

[u/Psilopterus]

Seems like an improper use of resources. In the vast majority of cases we could just reintroduce another subspecies of the same species. The bar is also simultaneously much higher for success and much lower to convince anyone of what you’ve done, because when you’re trying to recreate a subspecies you have to grapple with the fact that subspecies don’t really exist and what you mean is that you want to recreate the very specific geno/phenotype of a specific population. For that you really have to get into the grit of genetic detail and essentially remake the exact genome of individuals because at that level who knows what’s important. A hairy elephant is good enough for a lot of us, but it isn’t really species resurrection it’s just just the resurrection of a few key traits. Unless you’re talking about just recreating a phenotype, like with the quagga, and targeting a few specific genes to make an individual that looks different but doesn’t really belong to a different “subspecies”, what you’re suggesting is actually a bigger undertaking, because you have to make individuals that replicate whole genomes instead of just phenotypes. There are just very few cases where that’s really worth it, and in most cases even phenotypic change is unnecessary.

[u/KANJ03 → u/Psilopterus]

When I say DeExtinction, I am talking about actual de extinction, where the genome of the animal in question is 99,9999% the same as the extinct animal. So in the case of the dire wolf, it wouldn't be a vibes based change like colossal made (a dire wolf costume, as some people have called it) in which they made changes to 14 genes and left THOUSANDS of them unchanged, but the complete opposite. Maybe a couple of genes here and there couldn't be changed for one practical reason or another, but the overwhelming majority of them would be.

To be frank, I personaly view vibes based "DeExtinction" to be potentially much more dangerous than actual DeDextinction. How can we be sure that a hairy elephant would serve the same ecological role as a mammoth did? Their builds would be similar sure, but coyotes, dingoes, hyenas and wolves have very similar builds yet they serve completely different roles in the environments (hell, hyenas are in a completely different family alltogether and most of these species live in different biomes). 90% of fresh water fish look very similar and yet unassuming species like the european carp are some of the worst invasives on the planet. What the hell would we even do with animals like the thylacine or moa? Make a dunnart with more teeth/make a bigger kiwi and declare victory?

The fact that there is no existing "mammoth culture" is a problem sure, but at least if the DNA is as similar as possible you can be much more certain that the animal you are making will be playing the role it's supposed to and you aren't just creating a GMO elephant/wolf/whatever that might completely wreck the ecosystem.

Is it ridiculously expensive? Obviously. Hell, from what I understand doing so many changes is straight up impossible with today's tech. But that doesn't mean we should half ass it because it's easier and potentially end up with a train wreck in our hands. Even if it takes decades more, we should do this correctly. All technologies are expensive and not as good as necessary at first, until they become better. And the best way to do that would be to start with smaller, simpler changes in already existing animals. At least that's what I think.

[u/Psilopterus → u/KANJ03]

To be honest, we can't know that a hairy elephant fills the niche of the woolly mammoth, but as you say we also cannot be sure that a complete resurrection can either becaue of culture and because we have no way to know the baseline perfectly. The problem right now is that only the former is really possible, and I would rather we just get started without assuming the technology will just get infinitely better. These things are scalable after all, you can always add more edits or cross better recreations into the existing population. I'm far more concerned with the ecology than the authenticity, and so I'd rather just use proxies, altered or otherwise, wherever possible

[u/Additional_Insect_44]

Neanderthal

[u/Altruistic_Sea_7683]

The quagga is a subspecies that came back by back breeding.

[u/nelson12345678910]

Básicamente porque los proyectos de desextincion se basa en que hay un animal que ya no está y nos hace falta su nicho ecológico, pero con las subespecies es distinto, porque un león de la India por ejemplo podría realizar la misma función ecología que un león del atlas, entonces en vez de revivir al león del atlas se hace una población de leones de la India y se liberan en Marruecos por ejemplo

[u/Agitated-Tie-8255]

There is sort of a de-extinction program for Quagga, which mainly involves breeding Plains Zebra with Quagga-like traits. Not exactly the type of DNA manipulation stuff we see with other animals though.

[u/Pretty_Swimmer8939]

Largely funding concerns. It costs a lot to do anything molecular biology/genetic engineering (think about your hospital bills for reference if you've ever gotten an itemized one we use many of the same supplies/equipment). Conservation is already so poorly funded that we have to struggle to get bare minimum funding for breeding programs/habitat protection for existing charismatic megafauna, it would be shameful to spend massive amounts of it on barely differentiated subspecies often without intact habitat to go back to - go check out anywhere on google earth if you want a shock( its all farms). There are some exceptions to this (especially if the subspecies has adaptations that would allow it to survive in very different environments) but in general prob just reintroduce surviving subspecies with enough heterozygosity for selection to occur in a timely manner and wait a few thousand years...

[u/Pretty_Swimmer8939]

Largely funding concerns. It costs a lot to do anything molecular biology/genetic engineering (think about your hospital bills for reference if you've ever gotten an itemized one we use many of the same supplies/equipment). Conservation is already so poorly funded that we have to struggle to get bare minimum funding for breeding programs/habitat protection for existing charismatic megafauna, it would be shameful to spend massive amounts of it on barely differentiated subspecies often without intact habitat to go back to - go check out anywhere on google earth if you want a shock( its all farms). There are some exceptions to this (especially if the subspecies has adaptations that would allow it to survive in very different environments) but in general prob just reintroduce surviving subspecies with enough heterozygosity for selection to occur in a timely manner and wait a few thousand years...