Revisiting O’Brien et al. 1983

In a paper published in Science in 1983, Stephen O’Brien, David Wildt, David Goldman, Carl Merril and Mitchell Bush showed that the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) had extremely low levels of genetic diversity, a pattern that they interpreted as resulting from a population bottleneck. This study was one of the first to apply genetic tools to a conservation problem. Thirty-three years after the paper was published, Hari Sridhar spoke to Stephen O’Brien about his motivation to carry out this study, how this group of authors came together, and what we have learnt since about genetic diversity in cheetahs.