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Thanks to century-old DNA, bands of beach beetles may soon be surfing and frolicking again on Northeastern shores.
The insects in question, beach tiger beetles, once populated beaches from Massachusetts to the Chesapeake Bay. Now the beetles are listed as an endangered species, and only one viable population north of the Chesapeake Bay remains, on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Naturalists want to reintroduce the Northeastern tiger beetles into their traditional habitats. But it isn't as easy as just bringing a box of beetles from Martha's Vineyard to another beach. There are 1,000 species of tiger beetles. Moreover, the beach tiger beetles in the Chesapeake Bay differ slightly from the islanders; the ones that are now MIA may differ from both existing populations.
Conservation biologists first have to decide exactly what beetle species should be restored. They also have to find out why the beetles disappeared in order to manage a successful reintroduction.
But the very problem conservation scientists are trying to solve -- a populations' disappearance -- makes it hard to answer these questions. It's difficult to study animals that no longer exist.
Scientists are turning to museum specimen collections to find the answers, hoping the specimens' DNA will provide information that can no longer be obtained from living animals.
Recently Paul Goldstein, an insect curator at Chicago's Field Museum, and Rob DeSalle, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at New York's American Museum of Natural History, used century-old tiger beetle DNA culled from the museums' specimens to figure out the best way to reintroduce the beetles to northeastern beaches.
And yes, beach tiger beetles really do run and surf.
"There are lots of cool aspects to these beetles," said Goldstein. "The adults are 'cursorial,' or running predators of smaller invertebrates; the larvae dig tubes in the sand where they live for almost two years as ambush predators, mostly of smaller invertebrates as well.
"When they are near the water's edge and are hit by an incoming wave, they essentially get rolled, but manage to pick themselves up and continue merrily down the beach. To me, it looks like they are body surfing ... they're gorgeous."
The scientists examined the specimens, collected from 21 towns up and down the Northeast Coast between 1885 and 1971, for the presence of a small-scale DNA shuffle (a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP) to help them understand what caused the current genetic variation between the Martha's Vineyard population and the Chesapeake Bay beetles.
"We used some tricks to ensure that things would work well," DeSalle explained.
"For instance, we presumed that the DNA in these specimens was very badly degraded, and so we used molecular techniques that targeted small DNA fragments and didn't even try to go after large fragments. Our success rate was about 40 percent, meaning four in 10 specimens gave us information."
By examining the differences in the DNA of the tiger beetle specimens from the museums and comparing it with that of existing populations, Goldstein and DeSalle learned that current populations developed variations in their DNA due to human intervention, not natural evolution.
Forced into increasingly isolated populations, the beetles split into two very distinct populations, instead of intermingling and swapping genetic information as they normally would have.
Now that they know why the tiger beach beetle populations differ from each other, conservationists can make educated decisions about which population to draw from when reintroducing the insects.
Goldstein and DeSalle advocate keeping the Martha's Vineyard and Chesapeake Bay tiger beetle populations separate, despite the fact their genetic differences arose only recently. They believe the beetles' slight DNA shift should be acknowledged in reintroduction efforts.
But why all the fuss about beetles?
"As a group, they represent an important focus of evolutionary and ecological research," Goldstein explained. "In the context of beach conservation, they represent an important permanent resident, unlike many of the migratory shorebirds that often form the focus of beach stewardship efforts.
"Many beaches, including some managed for wildlife, only restrict activity in the vicinity of federally protected shorebird nests during the nesting season, and relax those restrictions at other times, leaving more sensitive animals and plants like the Northeastern beach tiger beetle twisting in the wind."
Goldstein and DeSalle both believe that further DNA studies of extinct and endangered species may help in establishing more effective conservation management guidelines.
DeSalle added that he's hoping to reintroduce other extirpated Northeastern beach species by examining the museums' collections of other animals and plants.
"Going back in time to discover the genetic makeup of things is really cool, especially since I have taken my kids to a lot of the beaches from where we have specimens," said DeSalle.
"When you have the knowledge that these beaches once had a thriving genetically diverse population of things like beetles and you go to a beach like Coney Island, you feel a bit special," DeSalle said.
"You can almost see what the beach looked like a hundred years ago; all of the people and rides and noise go away and you kind of see the beach as it was. It's quite a nice sensation."
