Project description
How genome architecture shapes genomic erosion in threatened birds
Genomic erosion – the progressive loss of genome-wide genetic diversity and accumulation of harmful mutations within a population over time – is driven by inbreeding and genetic drift in small populations. It decreases a species’ ability to adapt to environmental changes, reduces population viability and increases extinction risk. Understanding its mechanisms is essential to conservation. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the RANGE project aims to reveal the fine-scale rules governing genomic erosion. It will investigate genomic erosion patterns across recombination landscapes and genome architecture. Combining high-resolution genomic mapping, pedigree-based haplotype tracking and forward-in-time simulations, RANGE will develop a mechanistic framework linking genome features to genomic erosion in endangered bird species.
Objective
Understanding how threatened populations lose genetic diversity is a fundamental challenge in evolutionary biology and conservation. Genomic erosion—the loss of diversity and accumulation of harmful mutations—reduces adaptive potential, drives inbreeding depression, and increases extinction risk. Yet, we still lack predictive models of how erosion unfolds across the genome during population decline. In RANGE, my aim is to test how recombination landscapes and genome architecture shape genomic erosion, moving beyond genome-wide averages to reveal fine-scale rules that govern genetic diversity loss.
The project combines three components: (i) Develop genomic resources by building high-resolution recombination maps, analysing high-quality reference genomes, and reconstructing founder haplotypes in four endangered bird species with exceptional temporal and pedigree data. (ii) Explain patterns of genomic erosion by tracking haplotype segments through pedigrees and applying simulations to disentangle the contributions of recombination, drift, and gene conversion. (iii) Establish a predictive framework that integrates empirical patterns with forward-time models (SLiM) to generalise findings across genomes and species.
By explicitly incorporating recombination landscapes into temporal genomic analyses, RANGE will, for the first time, test whether genomic features can predict the locations and patterns of load accumulation in threatened birds. This integration of evolutionary theory, high-quality temporal genomics, and conservation will transform our understanding of genomic erosion, delivering conceptual advances and practical insights into how genome architecture shapes diversity in small populations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences evolutionary biology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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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-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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