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Glacial Tundra–Steppe Plants: The Extinction Paradox

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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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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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(öffnet in neuem Fenster) ERC-2025-ADG

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Gastgebende Einrichtung

ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM FUR POLAR- UND MEERESFORSCHUNG
Netto-EU-Beitrag
€ 2 744 430,75
Adresse
AM HANDELSHAFEN 12
27570 Bremerhaven
Deutschland
Region
Bremen Bremen Bremerhaven, Kreisfreie Stadt
Aktivitätstyp
Research Organisations
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Begünstigte (2)