Understanding genetic adaptations to climatic and land-use change has important implications for both current and future environmental and conservation management strategies. Small mammal populations provide an ideal taxonomic group to study land-use, environmental and climatic changes, but many are currently under threat. For example, water voles are one of the UK’s fastest declining species, with a 90% population decrease in the past 30 years. Ancient DNA (aDNA) studies offer a powerful approach via which to explore genetic change through time, but have not yet been widely applied to small mammal populations. This PhD project will expand the potential of palaeogenomic methodologies to small mammals, specifically examining how water vole (Arvicola amphibius) and brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) populations responded to climate- and human-driven changes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through time. The project will generate a genome-wide dataset from archaeological, museum and modern samples which will then be utilised to explore demographic history of these species, as well as changes in population size and selective sweeps.
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