The genomic basis of adaptation to changing environments: applications to wildlife conservation

适应不断变化的环境的基因组基础：在野生动物保护中的应用

• 批准号: 341711-2013
• 负责人: Russello, Michael
• 金额: $ 1.6万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=527430
• 关键词: genomic; basis; adaptation; changing; environments

Human modification of the environment, including large-scale habitat conversion and soaring greenhouse gas emissions, pose major threats to global biological diversity, directly linked to enhanced extinction rates 100 to 1,000 times greater than background levels. Maintaining species' ability to persist in changing environments ultimately means preserving genetic variation underlying ecologically important traits. Conservation genetic studies over the past three decades have played an important role in understanding genetic and evolutionary processes and in delineating the patterns that are relevant to managing endangered populations. However, major unresolved questions remain, largely associated with identifying fitness-related functional genetic variation for disentangling the relative roles of drift and selection underlying observed patterns and for exploring implications associated with how populations may adapt to changing environments. A main reason underlying this persistent challenge has been our inability to directly assay adaptive genetic variation at a broad-scale in natural populations of species of conservation interest. Population genomics provides a powerful approach for separating locus-specific effects in the form of outlier loci from genome-wide effects governed by neutral evolutionary processes. My research program combines the power of next-generation DNA sequencing and genotyping technologies with the analytical framework of landscape and population genomics to address basic and applied questions regarding local adaptation, population history and phylogeography, centered on the climate-sensitive American pika. This work will have direct implications for understanding biotic responses to climate change at the regional and landscape scales while formulating and evaluating novel approaches for integrating knowledge of evolutionary potential with other critical factors (habitat quality, ecology, behavior) for informing conservation prioritization.

人类对环境的改变，包括大规模的栖息地转换和温室气体排放激增，对全球生物多样性构成重大威胁，与物种灭绝率比背景水平高100至1000倍直接相关。维持物种在不断变化的环境中生存的能力，最终意味着保护潜在的重要生态特征的遗传变异。在过去的三十年中，保护遗传研究在理解遗传和进化过程以及描述与管理濒危种群相关的模式方面发挥了重要作用。然而，主要的未解决的问题仍然存在，主要与确定与健康相关的功能遗传变异有关，以解开漂移和选择在观察模式下的相对作用，并探索与种群如何适应不断变化的环境有关的含义。这一持续挑战的一个主要原因是，我们无法在具有保护意义的自然种群中，大规模地直接测定适应性遗传变异。群体基因组学为从中性进化过程控制的全基因组效应中分离出异常位点形式的位点特异性效应提供了一种强有力的方法。我的研究项目将下一代DNA测序和基因分型技术与景观和种群基因组学的分析框架相结合，以气候敏感的美国鼠兔为中心，解决有关当地适应，种群历史和系统地理学的基础和应用问题。这项工作将直接影响在区域和景观尺度上理解生物对气候变化的反应，同时制定和评估将进化潜力知识与其他关键因素（栖息地质量、生态、行为）相结合的新方法，为保护优先级提供信息。