SURVIVOR · Historic response of a wide-ranging carnivore to climate change
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-06-01 → 2020-06-30
- EU contribution
- €173,857
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Historic response of a wide-ranging carnivore to climate change
The cave lion is an extinct relative of the African lion, which lived until around fourteen-thousand years ago. If we could better understand the reasons that this animal went extinct (for example was it due to the climate warming, being hunted by humans, or their habitat disappearing?), we could use this information to help protect its current-day relatives. These relatives are some of the most endangered species on the planet, such as Amur leopards, Iberian lynxes, and Asiatic cheetahs. On the other hand, wolves lived at a similar time to cave lions, but are still around today and so on the face of it, did not go extinct. However, when we look at the genetics of very old fossils from wolves, we see that there were varieties around in the past that are not here today, so like the cave lion, some wolves did go extinct. What are the differences between these evolutionary "success" and "failure" examples? It may be that they naturally had genetic traits that better enabled them to adapt to the quickly warming climate at the time, or perhaps they inherited those traits by breeding with closely related species that we know existed at the time? If we knew that this breeding between closely related species was needed to stop them from going extinct, it might make us change the way that we manage similar species today. This research project aimed to get a better understanding why cave lions went extinct and wolves did not. Specifically, we used DNA from the bones of these animals (up to 40,000 years old) to attempt to answer the questions: 1) When did these populations or species go extinct? 2) How are the extinct populations related to the living ones? 3) Are there any genetic traits that are associated with these species either going extinct or surviving? 4) Can this tell us anything about how animals are likely to respond to the changing climate in the future?
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This proposed project investigates novel ways of predicting the effects of future climate change on the survival of animal species. We will focus on a case study of two genetically and morphologically distinct wolf populations living in Eurasia. One of these survived the climate changes that have occurred over the past 40,000 years, whereas the other did not. We will describe the details of this extinction and replacement event, and determine the genetic processes that led to this difference between the two populations. To achieve this, we will carry out next-generation sequencing of wolf ancient DNA samples, and take advantage of ancient samples already collected and sequenced from across Eurasia. Together, this dataset will constitute the largest ancient wolf genome dataset ever collected. The project will end with a workshop that includes experts in climate and population viability modeling, and conservation practicioners, to explore the ways that the findings can be incorporated into future climate change mitigation planning. This workshop will provide new research avenues that the experienced researcher will be able to exploit in order to reach and reinforce a position of professional maturity and independence. The experienced researcher will also be trained in cutting edge scientific techniques and analyses, as well as a number of skills that are transferable between countries and sectors (including management, grant writing, communication and teaching), and that will facilitate his development into a research leader.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- NATURHISTORISKA RIKSMUSEET · StockholmCoordinatorSweden
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union