GELIFES Seminars - Anne Charmantier

Anne Charmantier (CNRS)

How do birds adapt or don’t adapt to urbanisation?

With its conspicuously altered ecological dynamics, the urban environment stands in stark contrast to the natural environment that has been used as research ground for virtually all long-term studies used as cornerstones in evolutionary ecology. Because of this ecological contrast, it is often assumed that new phenotypes found in cities are the result of an evolutionary response to novel selection shaping genomic variation. In this talk, I will argue that urban environments offer exciting perspectives to investigate processes of rapid adaptation, using combinations of approaches, in particular quantitative genetics and genomics. Results from a project on great tits Parus major along an urbanisation gradient in Montpellier will illustrate the potential of studies on urban local adaptation. This study revealed phenotypic divergence for a large set of avian morphological, behavioural and life history traits: e.g. birds in the city are smaller, more aggressive, and breed earlier and smaller clutches. Comparing natural selection in forest versus urban habitats failed to support the hypothesis that contemporary selection is leading to adaptive phenotypic differences between urban- and forest-breeding great tits. Finally, (epi)genomic investigations using RAD- and RRBS- sequencing revealed an effect of urbanisation on (epi)genetic diversity with numerous (epi)genetic regions showing elevated divergence, suggestive of a polygenic adaptation. These findings open exciting perspectives for broader investigations of genomic bases related to adaptation in urban environments, notably in relation to avian personality and metabolism.

Biosketch
Anne Charmantier is an evolutionary ecologist holding a senior CNRS position (eq. Prof, since 2018) in the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE, Montpellier, France). Her main research interests are focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in the evolution of adaptive traits, especially in a context of rapid anthropogenic changes. Since 2007, she is managing a long-term database initiated in 1976, which includes data (and samples) on blue tits in Corsica and mainland France, and great tits in urban and forest areas of the South of France. This data contributes to her research on local adaptation, plasticity, senescence, ecological genomics and sexual selection. She has particularly pioneered quantitative genetic approaches in wild populations, and her two main avenues of research are adaptation to climate change and to urbanisation. She has co-edited two OUP books on ‘Quantitative Genetics in the Wild’ (2014) and ‘Urban Evolutionary Biology’ (2020).

Link to seminar