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New climate change prediction tool provides insight into population-level vulnerability to global change
Researchers developed a toolbox that 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.
The 'Life on the edge' (herafter LotE) toolbox was created 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 signs of species declines. Predictions using the toolbox can help to provide crucial population level information and guide conservation prioritisation efforts to halt population declines.
A toolbox to improve predictions of wildlife vulnerability to climate change
Throughout the LotE toolbox, all data inputs are standardised and all code is open source, generalised and parallelised, so it is applicable across any number of different species from any geological area for which suitable genomic, ecological and environmental data exist.
"With its flexibility, Life on the edge represents a major leap forward in understanding population vulnerability within species," says Chris Barratt, researcher at Animal Breeding and Genomics (ABG) and lead author of the study. "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. I’m excited to see how we can use the toolbox in real-world systems, and move towards monitoring changes at the population level."
Enabling new genomic approaches in research and wildlife management
"Life on the edge provides an accessible, holistic tool for understanding how climate change will affect wildlife populations and guiding targeted conservation efforts," says Orly Razgour, researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK and co-author of the study. "Incorporating genomic information can improve our predictions of wildlife vulnerability to climate change, and such tools are essential for enabling researchers and conservation practitioners to use new emerging genomic approaches in their research and management decisions."
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 USA.e