麻豆淫院

A team of conservationists, zoologists and veterinary medicine specialists from Justus Liebig University Giessen, in Germany, the Department of Conservation, K膩k膩p艒 Recovery and the University of Otago, both in New Zealand, has successfully used artificial insemination to breed wild endangered parrots in New Zealand.

In their study, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the group overcame prior difficulties they had encountered while attempting to help the endangered birds boost their extremely low population numbers.

The K膩k膩p艒 is the largest of the parrots, so large that it cannot fly. It is native to New Zealand and its numbers have been dropping since the arrival of Europeans. The parrots are slow to reproduce and are the only lek-building parrots. Lek-building, also known as the track and bowl system, involves digging a bowl-shaped hole in the ground and then making a loud noise into it鈥攖he bowl amplifies the sound, allowing it to bounce off the sides of the valleys where the birds live.

In more recent years, the birds have become prey for rats, weasels and stoats carried aboard ships from Europe and elsewhere, and they are now highly endangered. Conservationists have been trying for many years to save them, first by moving them to nearby islands without predators and second by helping them breed using artificial insemination, starting back in 2009.

While the population increased to 142 individuals by 2019, growth is still hampered by low fertility and high embryo mortality. In this new effort, the researchers working in New Zealand have taken another, more assertive artificial insemination approach to help the birds.

The approach uses a new semen-collection technique that involves electric stimulation in addition to abdominal massage. In this new effort, semen was collected from 20 captured males and then inspected for quality鈥攖he best samples were then used to inseminate 12 females. The new technique proved fruitful; fertility rates rose from 29.4% to 70% in the second clutch, and four of the chicks born were confirmed to be a direct result of the artificial insemination technique.

The research team suggests the approach is viable and that it can be used to improve fertility rates in K膩k膩p艒. The researchers plan to try again over the next breeding season to see if they can increase the number of chicks that are born.

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