Objective
At the end of the last Glacial, the tundra–steppe collapsed and megafauna vanished, yet no plant extinctions were recorded—an extinction paradox. With plantExtinct, I ask whether losses were real but invisible, masked by proxy limits, and test the hypothesis that rapid warming and megafauna loss drove >5% of tundra–steppe plants extinct, with plant–plant interactions and early pastoralism delaying losses as an extinction debt.
A: I will harmonize Northern Hemisphere sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) plant-metabarcoding records and build the first sedaDNA-specific, bias-aware occupancy–extinction model. This corrects for preservation, sampling, laboratory and database biases, explicitly includes non-database (unknown) taxa, and converts sedaDNA records into site- and time-specific presence and last-occurrence probabilities. plantExtinct will then align losses across regions to flag global-extinction candidates and estimate extinction rates.
B: I will verify these candidates by developing a new sedaDNA genome-capture toolkit that combines organellar and nuclear signals (plastome-, repeatome-, GBS-capture). These multi-marker data will authenticate extinct plant taxa, reveal population decline, and—for the first time—test whether stress-tolerant taxa became more often extinct than competitive ones.
C: I will implement the first hemisphere-scale, interaction-aware palaeo-niche model, validated with time-stamped sedaDNA and—for the first time—explicitly including extinct plant taxa. This model will attribute losses to climate, megafauna loss, and land use, and—as a novelty—quantify extinction-debt magnitude and relaxation time on millennial scales.
Building on my established strengths in palaeogenomics and modelling, plantExtinct delivers new data, methods and models that advance extinction theory and provide actionable baselines for biodiversity rescue (refugia, seed banking) and for crop genomics through ancient stress-adaptation genetic variants.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-ADG
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27570 Bremerhaven
Germany
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