Response to Comment on "Individual heterozygosity predicts translocation success in threatened desert tortoises"

Peter A Scott; Linda J Allison; Kimberleigh J Field; Roy C Averill-Murray; H Bradley Shaffer

doi:10.1126/science.abg3199

Response to Comment on "Individual heterozygosity predicts translocation success in threatened desert tortoises"

Science. 2021 Jun 4;372(6546):eabg3199. doi: 10.1126/science.abg3199.

Authors

Peter A Scott¹, Linda J Allison², Kimberleigh J Field², Roy C Averill-Murray², H Bradley Shaffer^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Life, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX 79016, USA. pete.a.scott@gmail.com.
² US Fish and Wildlife Service, Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, Reno, NV 89502, USA.
³ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁴ La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

PMID: 34083461
DOI: 10.1126/science.abg3199

Abstract

Hedrick brings up several potential concerns that he feels challenge or limit our main finding. Hedrick does not comment on our empirical results, but rather argues that several factors may confound or invalidate our conclusion. Many of these concerns focus on unknown ecological aspects of the translocated tortoises, but we believe there is no reason to conclude that they bias the results or interpretation as presented in our original paper.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Animals
Heterozygote
Male
Turtles* / genetics