Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Looking for ghost wolves?!
Please visit the project's website [link] for more information! 👻 🐺
North American Canine Ancestry Project: Check out our project website [link]. This is a large scale, continent-wide project for completing a genome survey of North American canids. Using a reduced representation approach, we hope to explore admixture and population dynamics across North America.
Attention! Sample collection is currently closed for the behavioral genetics study of canine sociability.
Please visit the project's webpage [link] for more information!
The generation of genome-wide sequence data has brought with it both exciting opportunities for conservation and challenges for determining appropriate management practices in the face of complex evolutionary histories. Genomic data can provide deep insight into taxa with complex evolutionary origins and is a powerful tool for biologists to obtain a more complete view of ancestry. Many policy decisions are encumbered by patterns of gene flow between species that reveal complex evolutionary histories.
My research program and collaborators encourage a shift toward a web-of-life framework with emphasis on the need to incorporate flexibility in conservation practices by establishing a policy for lineages of admixed ancestry. We promote a conceptual framework under which hybridization, even extensive hybridization, no longer disqualifies a species from protection; instead, we encourage customized case-by-case management to protect evolutionary potential and maintain processes that sustain ecosystems.
Our questions explore these dynamics across specific demographic histories, typically in species that have experienced severe bottlenecks across many generations, and in many cases species that required federal intervention to prevent extinction. Although my group conducts research on a diversity of systems, most of the conservation-related genomic research is conducted on North American canid species, with a particular focus on gray wolves and red wolves. Each represent unique demographic histories with different current species status. We continue to champion the importance of hybrids and admixed genomes as a reservoir of endangered species ancestry for innovative conservation efforts to enrich the recovery program of an endangered species.
My research interests go beyond the scope of studying DNA variants and include other dimensions of the genome. The convergence of genome technologies and natural history hypotheses sets the stage for exploring traditional questions of behavioral ecology, population biology, and evolutionary history at multiple genomic levels. My research goal is to unravel genotype-phenotype evolution in both a naturally and artificially evolving species. I am specifically interested in the interaction of natural history phenotypes (e.g. social status, pigmentation, disease, fecundity, mating strategy) and gene expression changes and their regulation via epigenetic variation. Chromatin modification, differential methylation, microRNAs, and transcription factor binding can all have a profound effect on gene expression, initiating/silencing transcription, the degree of transcript stability, and splicing. However, epigenomic variation currently remains a largely unexplored area of evolutionary and population dynamics. As such, comparative genomic studies of wild and domesticated species provide the opportunity to integrate DNA-based variants and epigenetic modifications, as well as their potential effects on phenotype diversity. Tracking the inheritance of said variants as well as their evolutionary relationships will provide substantial advances towards understanding phenotype evolution.
If you are interested in supporting these projects and more, please visit my benefunder profile [link] to learn more!
If you are interested in joining the lab, please send an email including your CV to vonholdt@princeton.edu briefly summarizing relevant experience and research interests.