About this Research Topic
For biodiversity, population genomics offers a powerful and expanding collection of tools, offering new insights into demographic history, population structure, adaptability, and the effects of genetic variation. Given the numerous risks to global biodiversity, researchers must continue to work to manage and protect populations. The subject of population genomics has grown in non-model organisms during the last decade, and the results of this study are now being used in wildlife conservation and management. Genomics methods can offer reliable estimates of basic animal population characteristics such as effective population size, inbreeding, demographic history, and population structure, all of which are important for conservation efforts. Furthermore, population genomics studies can pinpoint specific genetic loci and variants that cause inbreeding depression or adaptation to changing environments, allowing conservationists to estimate populations' ability to evolve and adapt in response to environmental change and manage adaptive variation.
Macroorganism-derived genetic material obtained in environmental samples has the potential to be utilized for population and community genomic analysis, revealing metrics including population diversity, functional connectedness, adaptive variation, and age structure. Environmental DNA (eDNA) from macroorganisms is large enough to contain nuclei or cell fragments, according to fractionation studies, and shows that nucleus single nucleotide polymorphisms can be amplified from environmental samples, indicating that genomic analysis of environmental samples is possible. Collection procedures can be tailored to focus on the individual genotype or on gathering a representative sample of the population or community to employ environmental DNA/RNA for insights into population and community genomics or transcriptomics. Differences in genomic output among individuals and validation of marker sets relevant to the target species or population is required, in addition to the technical obstacles of collecting, storing, and interpreting these materials. Therefore, these techniques that are easy to collect data (eDNA, microbiota, etc.) techniques have provided a more detailed and different interpretation of many studies today, for example, the effect of the environment on the change of feeding behavior, more detailed observation of the ecological effect on the formation of species, the contribution of other organisms to adaptation and many similar questions. It is equally important to disseminate and share studies conducted with these methods to explain population genomics and adaptations.
We welcome submissions that address the following themes:
• Case studies in specific species that demonstrate recent progress in wildlife population genetics, including how population genomics methodologies have been implemented to date and how the field might continue to connect research to important conservation activities in animal populations
• How population epigenomics, transcriptomics, metagenomics, and eDNA methods could be used in wildlife, ecology, adaptation, evolution, and conservation.
• How genomic information may be extracted from environmental samples and how it's distributed in the environment
• How sampling design can be used to learn more about populations and communities
Macroorganism-derived genetic material obtained in environmental samples has the potential to be utilized for population and community genomic analysis, revealing metrics including population diversity, functional connectedness, adaptive variation, and age structure. Environmental DNA (eDNA) from macroorganisms is large enough to contain nuclei or cell fragments, according to fractionation studies, and shows that nucleus single nucleotide polymorphisms can be amplified from environmental samples, indicating that genomic analysis of environmental samples is possible. Collection procedures can be tailored to focus on the individual genotype or on gathering a representative sample of the population or community to employ environmental DNA/RNA for insights into population and community genomics or transcriptomics. Differences in genomic output among individuals and validation of marker sets relevant to the target species or population is required, in addition to the technical obstacles of collecting, storing, and interpreting these materials. Therefore, these techniques that are easy to collect data (eDNA, microbiota, etc.) techniques have provided a more detailed and different interpretation of many studies today, for example, the effect of the environment on the change of feeding behavior, more detailed observation of the ecological effect on the formation of species, the contribution of other organisms to adaptation and many similar questions. It is equally important to disseminate and share studies conducted with these methods to explain population genomics and adaptations.
We welcome submissions that address the following themes:
• Case studies in specific species that demonstrate recent progress in wildlife population genetics, including how population genomics methodologies have been implemented to date and how the field might continue to connect research to important conservation activities in animal populations
• How population epigenomics, transcriptomics, metagenomics, and eDNA methods could be used in wildlife, ecology, adaptation, evolution, and conservation.
• How genomic information may be extracted from environmental samples and how it's distributed in the environment
• How sampling design can be used to learn more about populations and communities
Keywords: population genomics, population genetics, molecular evolution, genetic adaptation, ecological adaptation
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
