タスマニアン・デビルの死滅が仲間の肉食動物の遺伝に影響を与えている模様(Tasmanian devil die‑off appears to be affecting genetics of fellow predator)

2024-01-08 ワシントン州立大学(WSU)

<関連情報>

• https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2024/01/08/tasmanian-devil-die-off-may-be-affecting-fellow-predators-genetics/
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02265-9

病気による上位捕食者の減少は中位捕食者集団のゲノム構造に影響する Disease-driven top predator decline affects mesopredator population genomic structure

Marc A. Beer,Kirstin M. Proft,Anne Veillet,Christopher P. Kozakiewicz,David G. Hamilton,Rodrigo Hamede,Hamish McCallum,Paul A. Hohenlohe,Christopher P. Burridge,Mark J. Margres,Menna E. Jones & Andrew Storfer
Nature Ecology & Evolution  Published:08 January 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02265-9

Abstract

Top predator declines are pervasive and often have dramatic effects on ecological communities via changes in food web dynamics, but their evolutionary consequences are virtually unknown. Tasmania’s top terrestrial predator, the Tasmanian devil, is declining due to a lethal transmissible cancer. Spotted-tailed quolls benefit via mesopredator release, and they alter their behaviour and resource use concomitant with devil declines and increased disease duration. Here, using a landscape community genomics framework to identify environmental drivers of population genomic structure and signatures of selection, we show that these biotic factors are consistently among the top variables explaining genomic structure of the quoll. Landscape resistance negatively correlates with devil density, suggesting that devil declines will increase quoll genetic subdivision over time, despite no change in quoll densities detected by camera trap studies. Devil density also contributes to signatures of selection in the quoll genome, including genes associated with muscle development and locomotion. Our results provide some of the first evidence of the evolutionary impacts of competition between a top predator and a mesopredator species in the context of a trophic cascade. As top predator declines are increasing globally, our framework can serve as a model for future studies of evolutionary impacts of altered ecological interactions.