Abstract
To what extent have endangered species gone through recent losses in genome-wide diversity? And have these declines led to an accumulation and fixation of deleterious genetic variants, which have negative effects on population viability? These are central questions in conservation biology, and providing an answer to them should be of considerable value for conservation management and decision making. Yet, these questions have to date been difficult to address. Indeed, several recent studies indicate that the levels of genome-wide diversity in species are more strongly affected by species´ life histories and ancient demographic events compared to recent changes in population size. From a conservation perspective, this implies that comparisons of genome-wide diversity among endangered species provide little information about the extent to which they are threatened by genetic factors such as inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity. This project aims to circumvent this issue by using a palaeogenomic approach to directly quantify the rate of change in genome-wide diversity in declining populations. This will enable us to examine to what degree endangered taxa, in Sweden as well as globally, have been subject to recent declines in heterozygosity, increases in inbreeding levels and accumulation of deleterious genetic variation.
Sweden