Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Colorado Plateau CESU

Description

The U.S. Geological Surveyâ¿¿s Alaska Science Center is offering a funding opportunity for research focused on climate driven co-evolutionary dynamics, particularly hybridization/introgression within and among mesocarnivore species distributed through the Arctic, boreal, and North Pacific temperate rainforest biomes of Alaska and neighboring Canada. This research is critical for informing management agencies within Alaska and elsewhere as to biodiversity trajectories within a warming high latitude climate regime. Considerable preliminary data exist based on previous funded research efforts attesting to hybridization dynamics occurring between closely related ermine (Mustela erminea) lineages occupying boreal and Arctic biomes in western Alaska and eastern Canada, as well as more ancient hybridization dynamics associated with Beringian and North Pacific ermine lineages. As well, prior classical genetic research has uncovered signatures of past and recent hybridization between the two North American marten species, Martes americana and Martes caurina, on islands of the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska and elsewhere along the North Pacific Coast. The history of diversification of these mesocarnivore species includes divergent ecological habitat affinities and isolation-reconnection dynamics associated with sea-level changes and post-isolation secondary contact (including human-caused translocation efforts) through the biogeographic province of Beringia. Obtaining a more nuanced understanding of the temporal ecological correlates of these post-isolation events, and their consequences, benefits from the application of genomic (next-generation sequencing and parallel tagged amplicon sequencing) technologies.

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