Using molecular genetics to help reconcile food production and biodiversity conservation

It is widely accepted that our need for food security must be balanced against loss of biodiversity. Innovations such as field margins and beetle banks attempt to make agricultural land more wildlife friendly but typically lower yield (production per unit area), so that more area needs to be farmed in order to meet demand. An alternative solution involves splitting land into two zones - high yield intensive farmland and zero-yielding dedicated habitat for wildlife. New theory and empirical data on how species respond to increasing yields allows the effects of each strategy on population sizes to be evaluated, but understanding what these changes mean for species' persistence requires hitherto unavailable information on each species' population history. A species that is and was always rare is of less concern that one that was abundant before agriculture and has been declining ever since.
This project aims to address this key gap in understanding by using phylogenetic reconstruction to estimate historical (i.e. pre-agricultural) population sizes of a reasonably large suite of species. It will focus on birds, as a group for which data on population-level responses to agricultural yields is already available. Species will be grouped according to current ecology and population trend (e.g. 'woodland, stable', 'farmland dependent, declining') and -5 species from each group sampled by taking buccal swabs. Using next generation sequencing, mitochondrial DNA will be sequenced in 50-100 individuals from each species. Inferred historical population profiles for the past 120ky will then be estimated using Bayesian Skyline Plots, implemented using BEAST software, and averaged across species in each group, in order to provide average trajectories for each class. The result will be a picture of how the avifauna community has evolved in response to anthropogenic changes to the landscape. In turn, this will provide an empirical basis for assessing the likely consequences of changes in future population size under alternative approaches for meeting the joint needs of agriculture and conservation.
This project will integrate ecology and genetics with knowledge of agricultural techniques. In the process it will provide training in taxonomy and species niche ecology, identified by BBSRC as vulnerable skills. It is also highly interdisciplinary and utilises new ways of working by, combining avian ecology, agriculture, conservation theory, historical vegetation reconstruction, mathematical aspects of genetic population reconstruction and next generation sequencing. To embrace this range, the project will be co-supervised by a geneticist, a conservation biologist and a specialist in the impact of agriculture on avifauna. Prof Amos will act as the primary supervisor. The project aims to inform agricultural policy by specifically addressing the problem of whether, for a given agricultural yield, it is preferable to farm more or less intensively to limit the impact of food production on biodiversity.