The evolutionary causes and consequences of human-commensalism in Eurasian Passer sparrows
Informations
- Funding country
Norway- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2021
- End date
- 12/31/2025
- Budget
- 1,412,532 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRIMEDBIO - Independent projects - Medicine, Health Sciences and Biology | Grant | - | - | 1,412,532 EUR |
Abstract
Human acivity often has negative consequences on the living world. However, some species have managed to take advantage of human altered habitat and rapidly adapted to novel niches opened up by human activity. The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a successful human-dependent species that thrives in human created niches. It has adapted to urban and agricultural habitats almost everywhere humans are present. Intriguingly, a number of other Passer sparrows have similarly exploited human-created niches and are likely to have experienced similar selective pressures. Have these other species aquired adaptations to these niches through hybridization with other human-dependent sparrows or have they evolved them anew? Are similar genes and phenotypes involved in independent adaptation to a human niche? What are the consequences of human commensalism for morphology, physiology, and behaviour and species interactions? We will investigate these questions by addressing three objectives. (1) We will reconstruct the evolutionary history of the house sparrow to test whether human commensalism has a single origin or has arisen multiple times in this species using genetic investigations. (2) Next, we will investigate the origins of human commensalism in the tree sparrow (Passer montanus), a distantly related species that replaces the house sparrow in the commensal niche across Eastern Asia. In particular, we will ask whether the tree sparrow also evolved alongside early agricultural society in China and whether there is evidence of parallel evolution of adaptation to a human niche. (3) Finally, we turn our attention towards the consequences of human commensalism and its impact on interactions among human-dependent species and their wild counterparts where they co-occur, testing explicitly for competition for resources and steps towards speciation.