Extinction is Forever . . .

Except when it isn't.  Thought to be extinct for 50 years, New Guinea singing dog was thriving all along

The New Guinea singing dog was thought to have disappeared from the wild some 50 years ago, but new research suggests the unusual species has been thriving all along in the New Guinea Highlands.

Genomic analysis, detailed this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, confirmed a group of wild dogs discovered in the New Guinea Highlands as the population from which New Guinea singing dogs were derived.

New Guinea singing dogs are noted for their distinct, melodious howls.

"Canids make all kinds of sounds, but the sound that New Guinea singing dogs make is different, it's unlike any dog sound you've heard," Elaine Ostrander told UPI on Tuesday.

"It has a harmonic, tonal quality that goes up and goes down in pitch," said Ostrander, lead investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Knowledge of the New Guinea singing dog can be traced back in the scientific literature to the 19th century, but by the 1970s, scientists reported the dog missing from the wild.

In an effort to conserve the species, a handful of dogs were brought from conservation centers in New Guinea to the United States. On the surface, the effort was a success, breeders turned eight or nine dogs into a population of nearly 300.

"The problem is that when you start with just eight or nine dogs and you breed them and breed them, you lose genetic diversity very quickly," Ostrander said.

In the mid-2000s, word spread of a group of dogs in the mountains of Indonesia that resembled New Guinea singing dogs. James McIntyre, president of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation, led a pair of expeditions to find and document the wild dogs. On the second expedition, in 2018, McIntyre was able to obtain blood samples.

Back in the lab, scientists were able to isolate the nuclear genomes of three individual dogs from DNA in the blood samples.

"When we looked at the highland dogs' genome and compared it to all known dog breeds from everywhere in the world, as well as to dingoes and village dogs from New Guinea, it was clear that they were most closely related to New Guinea singing dogs," Ostrander said.

The findings also allowed researchers to measure the loss of genetic diversity the New Guinea singing dog experienced while in captivity, data that could help conservation biologists improve future captive breeding programs and protect species vulnerable to genetic bottlenecking.

It's always in the last place you look.