Speaker
Description
Anthropogenic landscape change increasingly alters the movement of organisms and the exchange of genes across landscapes, yet predicting its effects on functional connectivity remains a major challenge in ecology and evolution. Gene flow across heterogeneous environments can be shaped by multiple, non-mutually exclusive processes, including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by resistance (IBR) and isolation by environment (IBE). The relative importance of these processes is expected to vary among species because ecological traits influence how organisms perceive and move through landscapes. However, most landscape genomic studies focus on single species, limiting broader inference about the generality of connectivity patterns across taxa.
Here, we investigated genomic connectivity in three widespread and co-occurring bumble bee species—Bombus terrestris, B. pascuorum and B. lapidarius—across an intensively managed agricultural landscape in southern Germany. Using a spatially explicit grid-based sampling design, we collected one individual per species within 1.5 × 1.5 km landscape cells (B. terrestris n = 127, B. pascuorum n = 145 and B. lapidarius n = 101) to minimise non-independence arising from colony structure and spatial clustering. We generated whole-genome-derived SNP data to examine the relative roles of geographic distance, landscape resistance, and environmental heterogeneity in shaping genomic differentiation.
Specifically, we tested for patterns of IBD, estimated resistance effects of different land-use types using IBR approaches, and assessed whether environmental differences, particularly temperature and land-cover dissimilarity, contribute to genomic differentiation independently of geographic distance (IBE). By integrating comparative population genomics with a standardized sampling design, this study evaluates whether connectivity patterns are shared across closely related pollinator species or mediated by species-specific ecological traits. More broadly, our work contributes to understanding how multiple processes interact to shape genomic connectivity in human-modified landscapes.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | Yes, I’m willing to present as a poster. |