Lions and wolves in space and time – genomic time series as a tool for guiding conservation efforts
Although it is extremely clear that many of our planet’s top predators are today facing unprecedented threats to their long term survival, deciding exactly what should be done to aid them is by no means trivial. Various DNA based metrics have been proposed as yardsticks against which to identify species and sub-populations at most risk, but many of these are difficult to use at best. Thanks to recent technological advances, palaeogenomics represents a promising new approach for helping ameliorate this problem, in particular, once sufficiently large datasets are generated to enable the monitoring of genomic health across space and time. In this talk, I use temporally distributed whole-genome datasets wolves and lions as an example of this tool in action, in order to highlight how such datasets can provide critical information that may be of use in helping guide future management decisions relating to these two species.
