SeaChange: The evolutionary response of fish stocks to a changing ocean

• Applicant: Dr. Julia Tovar Verba
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology ; Evolution, Anthropology
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 467026478

Ongoing climate change has led to a biodiversity crisis at a global scale, with populations reductions or extinctions being reported even in well-preserved areas of the globe. In addition, human overexploitation of natural resources has placed conservation as one of the most pressing challenges in modern societies, particularly of the highly vulnerable marine organisms. With SeaChange, we will focus on a tropical sardine species of marked economic and ecological relevance in Brazil to understand how this species has responded to past climate change, and to predict how it will respond to future changes in temperature. Using genomic tools that are now available for non-model organisms, I will develop a novel and transferable approach to monitor fish stocks, establishing a research program that will impact both science and policy. More specifically, this proposal has mainly three scientific objectives: i) Investigate the number of stocks of Harengula sp. occurring along the Brazilian coast and the genetic connectivity between these stocks.ii) Calculate current and past effective population size and test its correlation with temperature variability and habitat suitability. By testing the variability in population size in comparison with changes in habitat, we will be able to clarify if the species was positively or negatively affected by past environmental change and predict future effects.iii) Identify which genomic regions underlie species adaptation to temperature. The identification of these regions will help to predict this species response to future warming and will contribute to the understanding of the genomic bases of temperature adaptation.All of these questions can be addressed with population genomic methods that are in place in Dr. Pereira’s lab (LMU-Munich). Yet, these methods require 1) the whole genome resequencing of Harengula sp. samples collected in a temperature gradient, 2) a working environment with suitable facilities and 3) the contribution of collaborators with complementary skills.The Walter Benjamin Position at Dr. Pereira’s lab will allow me to successfully complete this proposal, by providing the conditions in terms of possibility of learning new skills, access to laboratories and supercomputers available at the Evolutionary Biology Department from LMU and the connection with other researchers. This project will not only contribute to the understanding of the impact of increasing temperature on the studied sardine and to other tropical species with similar exploitation and biological characteristics, but will be also crucial for my career development as a Fishery Genomics scientist.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position