New climate change prediction tool provides insight into population-level vulnerability to global change through combining genomic, geographic and environmental data.
Report by Chris Barratt, postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and iDiv alumnus
The toolbox, published in the journal in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, will enable researchers and conservation practitioners to understand and predict how global environmental change may impact wildlife populations by integrating genomic, geographic and environmental data. This research was led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig and an international team from across Europe (UK, the Netherlands, Germany) and the US.
We created Life on the edge to address one of the main limitations of most climate change vulnerability assessments that typically focus at the species level and do not account for intraspecific populations, which are often the first early warning signals of species declines. Life on the edge leverages population-level genomic data and spatially explicit models in a highly flexible way, and can be applied to any species or geographic area. Predictions using the toolbox can help to provide crucial population level information and guide conservation prioritisation efforts to halt population declines.
Four metrics providing unique population information
To build our framework, we created a standardised toolbox that firstly predicts the 'Exposure' of each population using known occurrences of the species in species distribution models (SDMs) and changes in environmental conditions between current and future climate scenarios. Secondly, georeferenced population-level genomic data is used to quantify neutral genetic diversity ('neutral sensitivity') and to identify and quantify the genomic regions involved in climate adaptation to estimate the 'adaptive sensitivity' of the population. Thirdly, genomic data is used to make predictions of movement between populations under current and future scenarios to assess any potential barriers for the population to shift its distribution to track suitable climate ('spatial barriers').
Each of the four metrics provide unique information about each sampled population, and can be combined to represent an overall measure of 'Population vulnerability', which can be used for prioritising populations in need of conservation efforts. To demonstrate its utility, we apply the Life on the edge toolbox to three East African frog species to predict population vulnerability across Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique, and to two European bat species.
A major leap forward
With its flexibility, Life on the edge represents a major leap forward in understanding population vulnerability within species. Its standardisation, modular construction and high level of species-specific parameterisation makes it possible to plug in data from any species to see what's going on in wild populations, which is an important starting point to fight against population declines and begin to halt the biodiversity crisis. We will now see how we can use Life on the edge in real-world systems, and move towards monitoring changes at the population level.
"Life on the edge provides an accessible, holistic tool for understanding how climate change will affect wildlife population and guiding targeted conservation efforts. Incorporating genomic information can improve our predictions of wildlife vulnerability to climate change. Such tools are essential for enabling researchers and conservation practitioners to use new emerging genomic approaches in their research and management decisions," says Orly Razgour at the University of Exeter in the UK, and senior author of the study.
The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; FZT-118), among others. Alumnus Dr Chris Barratt was a postdoctoral at iDiv's synthesis centre sDiv, which helps bring together existing but disparate data, methods, theories, and tools in new and sometimes unexpected ways.
Original publication
(Researchers with iDiv affiliation and alumni bolded)
Barratt, C.D., Onstein, R.E., Pinsky, M.L., Steinfartz, S., Kühl, H.S., Forester, B.R., & Razgour, O. (2024). Life on the edge: a new toolbox for population-level climate change vulnerability assessments. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.14429
