Harmful human activities such as poaching, climate change and habitat loss modify genetic diversity in nature. This project focuses on illegal ivory trade that has recently led to evolution of tuskless elephants that avoid poaching. Alarmingly, we do not know what such changes mean to elephant behavior, reproduction and lifespan. We use diverse longitudinal data on Asian elephants with three different tusk types (long, short, none) to study the costs and benefits of having tusks to elephant biology, their inheritance, genetic structure, and likely future evolution potential with differing human interference, providing critical data to the efforts to preserve wild elephants through Africa and Asia. The knowledge of ongoing selection gained in the project has several key applications in conservation such as identification of populations that are more likely to evolve adaptation against poaching.

2023

2027