Abstract
°Wiiile at The Blues Conservatory™ Bogie and Eureka established one of the four distinct foundational bloodlines of the Blue-throated Macaw (BTM) species in Bird Endowment's wild-caught, parent-rearing program. The protocols were designed to perpetuate the BTM wild-species culture in the domestic bird flock.
In March of 2014, the pair became part of another conservation undertaking. It was late 2012 when Dr. Ian Tizard first asked Bird Endowment about the possibility-at some point in the future-of obtaining a blood sample from a BTM in order to map its complete genome.
Tizard (the Richard M. Schubot Professor of Exotic Bird Health and Professor of Immunology and Veterinary Pathobiology at Texas A&M University) first sought to collect blood from a Bird Endowment wild-caught female BTM.
"Ideally, we would like to obtain 3 ml of fresh blood. We would like to sample a wild-caught bird since the genome can provide important data on historic bird populations as well as the amount of genetic diversity within the species," Tizard said.
"We would prefer not to use a captive-bred bird because then we really couldn't determine the population history," he said.
After a year or so, Tizard was ready to start his work and inquired once again about the current possibility of blood samples before he made commitments to the University.
Bogie and Eureka were the last surviving wild-caught BTMs in the Bird Endowment program. They had been retired for several years. Bird Endowment offered to donate the pair to Texas A&M. This would make them immediately available to the researchers at whatever point across the future of the research program. Texas A&M accepted the offer.
"It would be a privilege to have those beautiful birds in our aviary. I see them as a unique biological resource and perhaps they can provide us with material to help start the recovery of the species," Tizard said.
As of this article, Tizard says, "We have collected DNA from both of our birds and prepared a DNA library preparatory to sequencing. In the meantime we are busy assembling the genomes of the hyacinth macaw and the blue-and-gold macaw. We are trying to complete and publish them before we move ahead with our other Ara macaws. Janice Boyd is pushing us hard to compare the blue-throats with the blueand-golds. However with limited resources they just have to wait their turn!"
In other words, they have the DNA materials and they have the skills and knowledge to do the job; now it's just a question of funding.