Cabrera vole (Microtus cabrerae)
My PhD thesis focused on looking at genetic diversity of an Iberian endemic and threatened vole, the Cabrera vole. During my PhD, I was advised by Paulo Célio Alves, at CIBIO-InBIO, and co-advised by Jeremy Searle at Cornell University, and my work led to several key conclusions:
i) Although evolutionarily distinct with the genus Microtus, being the only species representing the Iberomys subgenus, our phylogenomics paper showed that previous claims at classifying it as a separate genus were not supported; ii) the Cabrera vole has been responding to climatic oscillations of the various glacial periods in the Iberian Peninsula, which we found in another study to be clear both at the mitochondrial and nuclear level; iii) there are multiple Evolutionarily Significant Units identified using genomic data that warrant different levels of conservation prioritization; however our paper shows that the patterns of neutral and adaptive variation differ and propose a careful consideration for the design of conservation measures. iv) using non-invasive sampling, we also produced several manuscripts looking at the species at the metapopulational level, including estimating population density and determining drivers of population survival, and were able to confirm the prevalence of social and genetic monogamy. We are now working on a new manuscript looking at the palaeodistribution of the species and its change through time using fossil presence data, ecological niche modelling, and genomic data. |