Collaborative Research: The roles of demography, genetics, and stochasticity in colonization

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An important problem in ecology is understanding the factors that enable (or prevent) the successful founding of new populations. Scientists know that two key factors are the numbers of individuals in the founding group (its demography) and the genetic composition of those individuals. A question that has received surprisingly little attention to date, however, is the relative importance of demography and genetics, and how they might interact. The primary reason for this neglect is that populations comprised of more individuals typically harbor more genetic variation, making it difficult to separate the two causes. The study to be carried out will pair a biological model (flour beetles, Tribolium castaneum) with mathematical and statistical models to understand the role of stochasticity (chance) and disentangle the relative contributions of the size and genetics of a founding group as it initiates a new population and spreads in a novel environment. The research findings will benefit society in multiple ways. They will be relevant to conservation efforts aimed at improving the designs of management plans to reintroduce a species to the wild (such as was done with the California condor). The results will also advance understanding and management of biological invasions, which occur when a species from one area is inadvertently introduced into a new region, and subsequently proliferates to economically and environmentally damaging levels. The study's conclusions will thus enable both policy makers and managers to make better-informed decisions. Additionally, the laboratory experiments to be conducted are of a scale that makes them ideal for involving undergraduates in research, providing excellent, hands-on learning opportunities. Further, graduate students in experimental and mathematical biology will receive training through this project. They will work directly with the senior scientists and with one another, gaining skills not only as scientists, but also learning to communicate and collaborate with individuals outside their specialized fields. Wide dissemination of the study's results will spread them well beyond traditional expert audiences.