Final Report Summary - PALAEOGENETICS (Looking to the past to predict the future: <br/>the evolution of biodiversity through climate change and the rise of human society)
The goal of the project was to develop a software that used approximate Bayesian computation to combine species distribution models and ancient DNA data for 6 species of mammals. This analysis was to be used to understand the affect of climate change and human society on mammalian population dynamics. Although Dr. Chan was unable to complete this aspect of the project, she did develop a novel analysis using approximate Bayesian computation to examine community response to climatic change, entitled “Detecting concerted demographic response across community assemblages using hierarchical approximate Bayesian computation”, this was published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, June 2014. This novel analysis and software uses genetic data to understand community response to past climatic and environmental change in communities as diverse as coral reef and temperate post-glacial communities.