STAMPEDE
Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Modern and Past Elephant DivErsity
African elephants are declining by 8% per year continent-wide (Chase et al. 2016, PeerJ). The ongoing decline started in 2006 with a rising demand for ivory and the poaching crisis has reached the worst level since the 1970s and 1980s, when elephant populations were reduced from 1.3 million to 600,000 individuals (Wasser et al. 2004, PNAS). Based on the African Elephant Status Reports in 2007 and 2016, elephant numbers in Africa declined by ~20% in a decade. Besides poaching, elephants continue to be under a lot of pressure from habitat loss and human-elephant conflict.
The latest assessment, released in March 2021, officially split the African elephant into two separate species, the savanna and forest elephants. Not only this, but assessing the species conservation status separately for both species allowed a more appropriate assessment of the population trends. And the news is not good. While until 2021, African elephant was categorized as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, after being split into separate species and a reassessment in a new census, the savanna elephant is now considered "Endangered" and the forest elephant is even in the "Critically Endangered" category (Gobush et al. 2021).
STUDYING POPULATIONS ACROSS TIME, SPACE, AND SCIENTIFIC FIELDS
The aim of my project is to perform the first continent-wide genomic analyses of African elephant diversity. I plan to use a multidimensional approach by studying populations across time, space, and scientific fields. What do these glorious words from my proposal mean? That I intend to study both, modern-day and ancient elephant populations from all across Africa, and I will collaborate with conservation geneticists, ecologists, field biologists, conservation practitioners, archeologists, and many other experts in various fields.
I will generate low-depth genomic data for hundreds of African elephants from across their current range, which will be used for analyses of present-day genetic diversity and connectivity. I will try to identify hotspots of genomic diversity, assess genetic isolation and fragmentation in ancient and recent past, identify which regions are essential for maintaining gene flow between populations, and create a resource that can contribute to fighting illegal trade.
In addition, this genomic catalogue will be used to identify the provenance of ancient ivory from the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck that sank near the Iberian coast ~600-500 BCE. This ivory is assumed to have originated in North Africa, and thus, represents a rare opportunity to generate first data of an extinct population of elephants. These were likely the elephants that were used as war elephants during the Punic Wars, but there is an ongoing discussion about which species they belonged to. Using ancient DNA techniques to recover DNA from the shipwreck ivory, I will test if they represent a genetically distinct lineage or show affinity to any of the modern populations.
As I see it, collaboration is key to any scientific endeavour and I'm glad that during the course of this project I'll get to work with Dr. Hans Siegismund, Assoc. Prof. Ida Moltke, Assoc. Prof. Rasmus Heller, and Prof. Anders Albrechtsen, who will be my colleagues at the Population and Statistical Genetics group at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, but I will be also closely collaborating with Prof. Alfred Roca at the University of Illinois in the USA, with Prof. Juan Luis Arsuaga at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, and with Prof. Love Dalén at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, and many more.
I also believe that science should be accessible and understandable by everyone, and therefore I will use this project as a platform to start an Instagram account and share what one lifetime of a project entails, what is it that an evolutionary biologist does on a daily basis, all the ups and downs of scientific work, as well as strong arguments for elephants being the coolest animals ever. Thus, I invite you to join me on Instagram at @elephantgenomics or share the profile with anyone who you think might find it interesting.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 892446.