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A Doe, a Deer, a Deer, a Deer...
Orne writes "Texas A&M University has announced it has successfully cloned its 5th species, the North American White-Tailed deer (see press release). Though the white-tailed deer is a common species, they hope they can use the knowledge to help repopulate endangered species of deer, like the Key West deer of Florida."
This is obviously a secret plot by the automobile industry. I mean, who else really thinks we actually need more of these??
It strikes me that there's a very cheap, efficient, and non-invasive to repopulate species of deer.
Let them have sex.
(When Texas A&M announced they'd cloned a cat, they said "The last thing we need is a new reproduction strategy for cats.")
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Only if all individuals in the population were cloned from the same individual, or from a small group of individuals. Actually, something similar to this happens in the wild. Its called the founder effect, and refers to the decreased genetic diversity in a population derived from only a few "founding" members.
You are correct that this will be a problem for the already extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger, if the suceed in cloning it.
However, this is not what they are doing to save the endangered species. The idea is to clone an individual that won't breed, and then introduce the clone into the captive breeding population. This adds diversity to the gene pool, by bringing in the genes from the non-breeder. Read the original link I posted for more info on this. Of course, this strategy assumes that there wasn't some genetic reason the original animal wouldn't breed in the first place. Perhaps he was shy? Or spent too much time reading slashdot? It seems to me that its likely he was just infertile. This is the biggest weakness of the strategy, in my opinion.