SUPR
RAD sequencing of Swedish pollinators
Dnr:

NAISS 2023/22-998

Type:

NAISS Small Compute

Principal Investigator:

Isolde van Riemsdijk

Affiliation:

Lunds universitet

Start Date:

2023-09-29

End Date:

2024-10-01

Primary Classification:

10610: Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (methods development to be 10203)

Webpage:

Allocation

Abstract

A major question for conservation biologists is to which extent habitat configuration and isolation, rather than habitat amount only, are important threats to insect populations. Population genomics provides a powerful tool to assess the degree of functional connectivity, while simultaneously capturing the effects of rare dispersal events. Especially for wild insect populations, knowledge about connectivity is largely lacking, due to species specific genomic properties and absence of population genetic estimates. Such data is difficult to interpret and rarely available. This project aims to improve our understanding of how fragmented wild pollinator populations are, and how connectivity affects genetic diversity of these species. I apply for the computational hours to assess population genetic structure of three solitary bee species and three hoverfly species in Sweden. The specimens needed for the project are available to me from a collection through an ongoing collaboration, and DNA has been already extracted. I will generate genetic data to investigate how well-connected populations of the different species are, and what landscape types that are detrimental for population connectivity and long term viability. This work will highlight the groups and species that are more vulnerable to land-use change as their populations are small or isolated, providing valuable information for management.