The National Science Foundation will fund research at UC Santa Cruz that will examine the DNA of brown bears in the lower 48 states, where the iconic beast’s numbers have seen catastrophic declines over the last century. The research project will use genetic-sequencing technologies to study the effects of this rapid population decline, as well as the impacts of previous conservation-management actions.
Why bears?
Globally, current rates of extinction across all species are up to 1,000 times higher than historical rates, with over one million species currently threatened with extinction—many within decades. These losses have disproportionately affected megafauna, especially carnivores like the brown bear (Ursus arctos). There are approximately 200,000 brown bears of various subspecies left in the world, distributed across northern Eurasia and North America.
Brown bears, which the iconic grizzly is a subspecies of, have been listed by the Endangered Species Act as threatened since 1975. In the late 1800s, the brown-bear population throughout the lower 48 U.S. states was estimated at over 50,000. Today, there are less than 2,000.
In addition to habitat degradation and land-use change, humans have long hunted brown bears for multiple reasons. Compared to the evolutionary timescales that have historically shaped biodiversity, the time scales of human-caused changes are substantially shorter. How these rapid anthropogenic changes will affect global species diversity remains ambiguous without proper monitoring and meaningful measures of change, according to Joanna Kelley, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
“Though genomics can greatly aid conservation initiatives, a lack of testing has limited its impact over the last decade,” said Kelley, the project’s lead investigator. “At times, management recommendations are made based on genetic studies with little thought given to the limitations of the analyses, or the practical considerations for on-the-ground management.”
Enter conservation genomics
Genetics was first applied as a conservation tool in the late 1980s, when genetic markers were used to delineate breeding and management groups for “species-survival plans” in zoos, and to identify parent lineage in order to reconstruct pedigrees. As genetics turned into genomics—whole genome, array-based, reduced representation sequencing—many in the conservation community adopted various approaches to estimate population genetic diversity and “gene flow” among locally defined populations.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature stated in its most recent Global Biodiversity Framework that "genetic diversity of wild and domesticated species [should be] safeguarded, with at least 90 percent of genetic diversity within all species maintained." However, beyond assisting in tracking managed groups of species, few studies have been done on how genomics can be used to effectively inform the conservation of wild populations, Kelley said.
Comprehensive data and collaboration
For this project, Kelley will use an extensive set of historic and modern brown bear samples to characterize genomic diversity over the last 200 years, how it has changed, and how or if management decisions have impacted the genomic landscape of the species. Her goal is to design conservation-action plans and investigate the consequences of past bottlenecks and long-term small population sizes. She will also recommend potential future management actions using genomic tools.
For the conservation-community more broadly, Kelley’s team will quantify the limitations of various types of genomic data for estimating population-genetic statistics and provide a better understanding of how these statistics relate to conservation status and management actions. For instance, they will assess how management decisions would change depending on which datasets are used, providing important guidelines to the conservation community.
Over the five-year project, Kelley will partner with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), UC Riverside, the University of Montana, and the Washington State University Bear Center. Her intention is that the genomic-monitoring system from this work will be immediately utilized in the field.
“A great example of this kind of database that's relatable to us is 23andMe or Ancestry, where, when you get a new sample, you can place it on a map to determine genetic ancestry," Kelley said. "If we can do the same thing and essentially build a 23andMe for bears, we can figure out where bears come from, what is their genetic ancestry. And if we're thinking about conservation action, like management, we know where populations should be moved from and to.”
The final phase of the project will be the creation of a comprehensive genomic, user-friendly dataset across brown bear populations in the lower 48 states that will allow for the integration of genomic data into annual reports and strengthen future conservation management recommendations.
Why now?
Kelley said the funding for this research comes at a critical time, given pending “rewilding” efforts into the Bitterroot ecosystem in Montana and Northern Cascades in Washington state. “We will investigate both historic and modern brown-bear populations, with a specific focus on populations for which conservation-management action is actively occurring,” she explained. “This research will go beyond the published page and be integrated into management decisions and policy. We are honored to be collaborating with conservation-action partners who have decades of experience in this realm.”
The project will draw its DNA samples from the longitudinal monitoring done by the federal agencies, biological collections provided by the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the University of Montana Zoological Museum, as well as modern genetic data. About $1.8 million has been awarded across all partners to fund the project, with just over $500,000 going to UC Santa Cruz.
This research is one of 10 projects receiving a total of $16 million in funding under the Partnership to Advance Conservation Science and Practice program, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Now in its second year, the program is designed to catalyze deep collaboration between researchers advancing basic science and conservation partners engaging in on-the-ground efforts.
For more information, see the official announcement.
