CAREER: The Assessment of Extinction Risk from Deleterious Mutation, Habitat Fragmentation, and Environmental Change

University South Carolina Research Foundation, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

Extinction is controlled by habitat destruction, disease, harvest, birth rate and the genetic health of a population, among other factors. This study uses high-performance supercomputing to realistically simulate the forces on natural populations to understand which types of wildlife are most likely to face extinction. To ensure that the project produces new knowledge of practical importance on the causes of extinction, and new computational tools that will be useful to managers of natural populations, the project will work closely with Native American and Federal salmon biologists in the Pacific Northwest and population biologists in Europe. There is wide recognition that life on Earth is undergoing a sixth major extinction event caused by human generated forces. Preventing extinction has been a high priority of people for many years. This project will help conserve natural systems by discovering new scientific knowledge on the causes of extinction. Most previous theoretical work on extinction focused on only one or two extinction forces at a time, for reasons of mathematical tractability. However, the multiplicity of forces controlling the fate of natural populations are inexorably intertwined, operating simultaneously and synergistically. This innovative project seeks to understand how extinction is governed by the interplay of these forces by using mechanistic computer models that capture essential levels of environmental and biological complexity.