Human Impacts on Wildlife / Impacts de l'activité humaine sur la faune

人类在地球上的足迹正以前所未有的速度增长，一些野生种群受到气候变化、栖息地破坏和过度捕捞等人类驱动的环境变化的影响。人类对野生动物影响研究中心的长期目标是评估人类活动如何影响野生动物的自然选择，并衡量这些新的选择压力对野生动物生态和进化的影响。一些研究已经记录了对当前前所未有的快速人为环境变化的表型反应。个体之间的表型差异会影响个体的适合度和平均生命率，最近有研究表明性状分布的变化会影响种群的增长率。尽管人口动态至少在两个世纪前就引起了人口统计学家和生态学家的兴趣，但很少有定量的实证例子可以说明基于遗传的表型效应对人口增长的重要性。因此，我们对生态和进化过程（即平均种群表型随时间的变化）对种群动态的相对贡献知之甚少，尽管它们对保护、自然资源管理和进化人口学具有重要意义。在接下来的七年里，在我们之前的发现和国际公认的专业知识的基础上，我们小组的研究将集中在三个轴上，以了解、估计和预测人类对野生动物的影响，并将沿着三个相互关联的关键轴扩展：1)评估动物是否能够适应人类驱动的气候和其他环境变化；2)量化人类驱动的性状变化对驱动种群动态的重要速率的影响；3)应用新的预测生态进化框架来预测人类活动对野生动物种群的影响。为了实现这些目标，我的研究小组将从脊椎动物（棕熊、大角羊、树燕、斑海豹）的长期纵向研究（19-50年）中获取非常详细的数据。我的项目将在预测遗传和表型性状变化对种群动态的影响方面取得重大进展。通过这些进展，我将为生物保护，资源管理和学术界的相关职位培养大量高素质人才。

The human footprint on our planet is increasing at an unprecedented rate and several wild populations are affected by human-driven environmental changes such as climate changes, habitat destruction and overharvest. The long-term goal of the CRC on Human impacts on wildlife is to evaluate how human activities affect natural selection in the wild and to measure the consequences of these novel selective pressures on the ecology and evolution of wild animals. Several studies have documented phenotypic response to current unprecedented fast rates of anthropogenic environmental changes. Phenotypic differences between individuals can affect their fitness and mean vital rates and it has recently been shown that changes in trait distribution can affect population growth rate. Although population dynamics have interested demographers and ecologists for at least two centuries, very few quantitative empirical examples illustrating the importance of genetically based phenotypic effects on population growth are available. We thus know little about the relative contribution of ecological and evolutionary processes (i.e., change in the mean population phenotype over time) to population dynamics, despite their fundamental importance for conservation, natural resource management and evolutionary demography. Over the next seven years, building upon our previous findings and internationally recognized expertise, research in my group will focus on three axes to understand, estimate and forecast the human impact on wildlife and will expand along three key interconnected axes: 1) evaluate whether animals can adapt to human-driven climate and other environmental changes, 2) quantify the effect of human-driven trait changes on the vital rates that drive population dynamics and 3) apply new predictive eco-evolutionary framework to forecast the consequences of human activities on animal wild populations. To achieve these objectives, my research team will exploit exceptionally detailed data from long-term longitudinal studies (19-50 years) of vertebrates (brown bears, bighorn sheep, tree swallows, harbour seals). My program will provide major advances to forecast the consequences of both genetic and phenotypic trait changes on population dynamics. Through these advances, I will prepare numerous highly qualified personnel for relevant positions in biological conservation, resource management, and academia.