Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

While climate changes and landscape features are known to shape the distribution and size of populations, it is imperative to understand how population connectivity and dynamics can be used to predict species' responses to future environmental change. My long-term research program uses comparative genomics to investigate population connectivity and examine the influence of historical (eg glaciations) and contemporary (eg environment, landscape) effects on the evolution of high latitude species. Over the last 25 years, my research program has continued to lead with modern molecular techniques and build on our foundational research strengths in ecology, including experimental designs that have outstanding coverage across the species ranges and larger sample sizes. Since my first DG on understudied resident bird species, we have discovered high levels of population structure in several species, some at unexpectedly small spatial scales. In black-capped chickadees, we found changes in dominant tree species or habitat modification (forestry) reduced gene flow among populations. We continued to build on our original hypothesis, that the genetic diversity of resident birds is influenced by landscape and connectivity, to study species with mixed migration strategies where some populations are year-round residents and others are migratory. We have successfully characterized genomic responses to selection, including genomic regions associated with thermoregulation and stress when comparing populations in different environments in mountain chickadees. We also examined the role of ecology and environment in the evolution of ecotypes in 3 species and found strong genetic differentiation in both penguin and shag colonies corresponding to behavioural, morphological and physiological differences. I build on these discoveries in my proposal to examine genomic differences among ecotypes and test the hypothesis that natural selection at ecologically important genes is driving adaptation to environmental changes. My proposal focuses on 3 research areas: genetics in cities, effects of wildfires on population connectivity, and genomic differences of ecotypes to examine recent (fires, development) and historical effects on evolution. The first 2 research areas will test the effects of habitat disturbance and fragmentation on dispersal in common songbirds furthering our understanding of how habitat affects dispersal, especially in cities. The third area studies incipient speciation where individuals are in the process of evolving into new species and have diverged further than merely genetically distinct populations. We will use genomic data to see how 3 sets of evolutionarily young and ecologically distinct lineages have evolved to produce remarkable differences over short periods of time. My research will also provide tools for city planners and conservation biologists to minimize the impacts of disturbance on native species and wildlife.