PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Joshua M. Miller AU - Maud C. Quinzin AU - Nikos Poulakakis AU - James P. Gibbs AU - Luciano B. Beheregaray AU - Ryan C. Garrick AU - Michael A. Russello AU - Claudio Ciofi AU - Danielle L. Edwards AU - Elizabeth A. Hunter AU - Washington Tapia AU - Danny Rueda AU - Jorge Carrión AU - Andrés A. Valdivieso AU - Adalgisa Caccone TI - Reviving a Lost Species: The Case of the Floreana Galápagos Giant Tortoise <em>Chelonoidis elephantopus</em> AID - 10.1101/143131 DP - 2017 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 143131 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/27/143131.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/27/143131.full AB - Species are being lost at an unprecedented rate due to human-driven environmental changes. The cases in which species declared extinct can be revived are extremely rare. However, here we report that a remote volcano in the Galápagos Islands hosts many giant tortoises with extremely high ancestry from a species previously declared as extinct: Chelonoidis elephantopus or the Floreana tortoise. Of 150 individuals with distinctive morphology sampled from the volcano, genetic analyses revealed that 65 had C. elephantopus ancestry Thirty-two were translocated from the volcano’s slopes to a captive breeding center. A genetically informed captive breeding program now being initiated will, over the next decades, return C. elephantopus tortoises to Floreana Island to serve as engineers of the island’s ecosystems. Ironically, it was the haphazard translocations by mariners killing tortoises for food centuries ago that created the unique opportunity to revive this “lost” species today.