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

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。我的研究项目结合了下一代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的力量，以测试关于快速环境变化的进化结果的预测，并探索其对保护的影响。主要研究的生物是美洲鼠兔（Ochotona princeps），一种不连续分布在整个北美西部山区的小型鼠兔。由于人们普遍认为美洲鼠兔是高海拔的栖息地专家，一些人预测，由于气候变化的直接影响，美洲鼠兔将成为第一个灭绝的哺乳动物。这项工作将对在区域和景观尺度上理解生物对气候变化的响应具有重要意义，同时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。该项目还将培养2名博士、3名硕士和10名本科生。由于基因组工具超越了单个学科，学生将有能力在学术界、政府或私营部门寻求各种各样的职业机会。此外，拟议的研究将通过ScienceLIVE为K-12提供拓展机会，为制定课程计划提供主题，并通过网络研讨会和来自该领域的博客将当地社区的教室与我们的研究团队联系起来。

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 frameworks of landscape and population genomics to test predictions about the evolutionary outcomes of rapid environmental change and to explore their implications for conservation. The primary study organism is the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small lagomorph discontinuously distributed in mountainous areas throughout western North America. Given its general perception as a high-elevation obligate, habitat specialist, the American pika has been predicted by some to become the first mammalian species to go extinct due to the direct effects of climate change. This work will have important implications for understanding biotic responses to climate change at the regional and landscape scales, while evaluating novel approaches for integrating knowledge of evolutionary potential with other critical factors (habitat quality, ecology, behavior) for informing conservation prioritization. This program will also play a fundamental role in training two PhD, three MSc, and ten undergraduate students. As genomic tools transcend individual disciplines, students will be equipped to pursue a diverse set of career opportunities within academia, government or the private sector. Moreover, the proposed research will offer opportunities for K-12 outreach through ScienceLIVE, providing subject matter for developing lesson plans and connecting classrooms within local communities to our research team through webinars and blogs from the field.