Conservation Paleogenomics: Retracing past natural and anthropogenic selective forces on the resilience of exploited fishes.

In this project, we aim at reconstructing the historical knowledge of habitat/climate change, harvesting pressure and compare this to levels of (neutral and adaptive) genetic variation within populations in highly exploited fish species from the North Sea region. The species targeted include the highly exploited North Sea plaice, the endangered European eel and the extinct sturgeon complex (European (Acipenser sturio) and American (A. oxyrinchus) sturgeon). Through the monitoring of genomic variation in fish bones from archaeological sites (dating to the 1st and 2nd millennium AD), we aim at analysing three levels of response to anthropogenic selective forces (phenotypic shifts, demographic changes and total extinction). Our approach will evaluate the genomic basis for adaptive changes in exploited fishes and as such quantify through selective gradient analyses the proportional impact of historical climate/environmental changes vs. human selective pressures.