Ph.D. Candidate, Integrative & Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program
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Genetic diversity and its effect on the scat microbiome in the threatened insular canid, Urocyon littoralis
Tuesday, March 5
1 PM
RRI 121
Abstract: Loss of genetic diversity in wild populations can have profound effects on the ability of a population to respond to a changing environment. Small populations can have low genetic variation due to inbreeding and strong drift, which may be exacerbated by further declines in population size. The Channel Island fox, Urocyon littoralis, was delisted/down-listed from the federal endangered species list in 2016 after successful conservation efforts brought them back from a 90-99% population decline in the 1990s. While their demographic recovery has been dramatic, much less is known about their genetic recovery. Therefore, we looked at the “natural” experiment of the Channel Island fox population declines, which varied in bottleneck presence, size, cause, and recovery across multiple islands. To assess their recovery, we conducted the first direct genetic comparison at the population level of pre- and post-bottleneck samples. In order to understand functional consequences associated with the loss of genetic diversity, we evaluated the relationship between island fox genetics and the bacterial community after characterizing the scat bacterial community using 16S amplicon sequencing.
PI: Drs. Suzanne Edmands and Xiaoming Wang
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