Genetic evolution, climate change, and wild animal evolution: to understand and predict.

Abstract

Human activities modify the environment of many wild animals. . . threatening population persistence and reshaping natural selection. Lab experiments have shown that genetic evolution may be fast enough to rescue populations from extinction, but in nature we know close to nothing about how and when evolution makes a difference. There are three main problems: (1) Population monitoring are too short and not detailed enough; (2) Adaptive evolution is impossible to demonstrate without genetic data (expensive) and genetic models (complicated); (3) A lack of tools to jointly model genes and demography. How to tackle these challenges? Show more