Australia’s invasive rabbit population is likely descended from two dozen wild English rabbits that arrived near Melbourne on Christmas Day 1859. This is now indicated by a genome analysis. According to the study, their ancestry gave the herd an advantage over rabbits that had arrived on the continent earlier.
Rabbits have now invaded most of the Australian continent and are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem there, threatening around 300 plant and animal species and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to agriculture every year.
According to historical records, the first wild rabbits met (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in Australia in 1788 probably with the first settlers in Sydney. Ships bringing rabbits docked along the coast for decades, but it was not until the second half of the 19th century that the population began to expand significantly, at a rate of 100 kilometers per year across the country.
Records also suggest that the spread of rabbits was due to a shipment of animals destined for a certain Thomas Austin in Barwon Park, southwest of present-day Melbourne. His brother had caught the animals near the family home in Baltonsborough, south-west England.
The Australian rabbits come from Baltonsborough
Evolutionary geneticist Joel Alves of the University of Oxford and his colleagues wanted to see if genetic data corroborated the record. To do this, they analyzed the genomes of 179 wild rabbits caught in Australia, New Zealand, France and the United Kingdom, as well as eight domestic rabbits of different breeds.