絶滅危惧種の保全優先度評価に向けたゲノム科学的アプローチ

抄録

Organisms inhabit various environments, but the habitat distribution varies greatly depending on the species. Species that inhabit a specific environment are greatly affected by environmental changes such as global warming resulting the decrease of their population size, although species inhabiting diverse environments will adapt to new or fluctuating conditions. It is difficult to decide which endangered species should be prioritized for conservation because no methodology has been established to assess their extinction risk. To evaluate the extinction risk, we focused on genetic diversity, deleterious mutation and the proportion of the duplicated genes (P_D) for five endangered freshwater stickleback populations in Japan and six endangered plants from four genera in the Ogasawara Islands where are registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our results showed that endangered species had lower genetic diversity, a higher proportion of deleterious variations, and lower P_D when compared with closely related non-endangered species. There are concerns that the number of extinct species will increase owing to human activity and future climate change, meaning that developing conservation plans for endangered species is critical. Knowing in advance which species are vulnerable to environmental changes is important when considering conservation priorities. Our results show that genomic information could be used as a possible indicator to measure the risk of extinction for species. We hope that this novel approach to species conservation will advance the scientific knowledge in this field.