Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Human activities are a major selective force in nature, potentially accelerating evolutionary changes in wild species. Phenotypic changes are particularly rapid in wild animals and plants harvested by humans or facing climate change. Growing evidence from models, experiments, and empirical data shows that these changes can reshape the ecology and evolution of wild populations and have cascading effects on communities and ecosystems. Yet, the mechanisms linking human-induce phenotypic changes to population dynamics and evolutionary changes are often unknown, making the task of predicting population persistence very difficult. Very few studies have measured the importance of genetically-based phenotypic effects on population growth. Thus, we know little about the relative contribution of ecological and evolutionary processes to population dynamics, despite their fundamental importance for conservation and natural resource management. The long-term goal of my program is to quantify and ultimately predict how human activities and human-driven environmental changes affect the ecology and evolution of wild species. Building upon our recent findings, in the next five years my research team will explore three interconnected objectives: I) evaluate how spatio-temporal variation in environmental variables affects traits and fitness, II) measure the effects of human-driven selective pressures on life history trajectories, and III) develop and apply eco-evolutionary population dynamics models to predict the effect of human activities on the dynamics of wild populations. My group is uniquely placed to tackle these questions by applying state-of-the-art statistical techniques from evolutionary demography to exceptionally detailed long-term data, where entire cohorts of marked individuals are followed from birth to death. We will analyze 18 to 50 years of field data on brown bears, bighorn sheep, tree swallows and harbour seals. With the support of my DG, my research will investigate how human driven environmental changes impact biological processes that are central to individual fitness. I will then examine how these fitness effects scale up to life-history trajectories and population dynamics. Thus, my research will continue to make important contributions to demography, population ecology and evolutionary ecology. It will rely on my demonstrated ability to apply novel statistical methods to long-term data on multiple wild populations evolving under both natural and human-driven selective pressures. My program will continue to attract excellent graduate and post-doctoral students, and to produce major contributions to scientific knowledge.