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Roles of genetics and environmental variability in animal population resilience: empirical testing in a changing world (DisperseAdaptSurvive)
Date du début: 1 mai 2012, Date de fin: 23 févr. 2015 PROJET  TERMINÉ 

Current climate change is threatening biodiversity more than ever due to the speed at which climate variables are shifting. Coupled with omnipresent land-use change, they are the two factors considered as the most important threats to terrestrial biodiversity. Very little is known of the respective joint contributions of climate change and habitat heterogeneity on the genetic make-up of natural vertebrate populations, which ultimately act on gene flow, genetic structure, and evolutionary adaptation simultaneously. The aim of this project is to determine the respective roles of climate variation and habitat heterogeneity as key factors modulating (i) population genetic diversity and levels of gene flow across populations, and (ii) response to natural selection on key life history traits using contrasted but complementary analytical methods in a wild passerine bird. This proposal will use a unique long-term study of several natural populations of blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus breeding in a mosaic of highly heterogeneous environments and monitored in Southern France and Corsica for the past 35 years. I will use a combination of approaches drawn from distinct fields in biological sciences, such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), a Geographic Information System (GIS) and an analysis of climatic data. Coupled with a population and quantitative genetics approach, as well as statistical modelling using multi-state recapture models, I will generate an integrated picture of the interactions between environmental change (habitat and climatic) and genetic variability in wild, natural blue tit populations. Finally, and in collaboration with the Forest Biodiversity department of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, (iii) a meta-analytical approach will be taken to synthesise available evidence on the importance of gene flow and habitat connectivity vs. evolutionary adaptation as drivers of population resilience across taxa.

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