Louis Bernatchez
Evolutionary biologist with main interest in applied evolutionary genomics and conservation of fishesUniversité Laval
Département de biologie
IBIS (Institut de Biologie Intégrative et des Systèmes)
1030, Ave de la Médecine
Québec, G1V 0A6
Canada
Website
Abstracts (first author)
Applied evolutionary genomics in fish conservation: some success stories and challenges for the future
Summary:
Conservation genetics has been defined as the application of genetics to preserve species as dynamic entities capable of coping with environmental change. Towards this end, molecular data can play two fundamental roles. The first one, inventorial, pertains to documenting patterns and has driven much of what we have accomplished until now. The second, mechanistic, refers to deciphering evolutionary processes underlying those patterns, is still in its infancy and this is where most of us put big hopes in the use of modern, high throughput genomics methods. Ultimately, we aim at finding causal relationships between genetic variation, phenotypes and the environment to predict future dynamics of selectively important variation and potential for adaptation to new conditions. In this presentation, I will illustrate some of the progress that we have made towards this end from our own research on fish conservation and management, and will comment on the main challenges that remains to be circumvented, no matter the power and resolution of the current genomics methods at hands.