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We are destroying species' habitats, leading to a mass extinction event. This habitat destruction also reduces the genetic diversity _within_ species. Our latest work develops quantitative models to predict how much genetic diversity has been and _will be_ lost. 🧬🧪🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We started with a simple question: What happens to genetic diversity when part of a species' habitat suddenly become uninhabitable?

To answer this, we developed WFmoments, a suite of numerical tools for computing things like π and Fst under arbitrary multi-deme Wright-Fisher models. We complemented this theory with more realistic continuous space SLiM simulations. github.com/moiexpositoalonsolab/wfmoments

What we found surprised us... Species can lose A LOT of habitat without having much effect on genetic diversity. In some scenarios a species can lose 80% of its habitat while retaining 90% of its genetic diversity. But this is just IN THE SHORT TERM.

This is BAD. If we monitor the genetic diversity of a species, we might be convinced that it's doing okay, when in fact it may continue to lose genetic diversity for a long time even without losing any more of its habitat!

Everything up to now has assumed that habitat is lost along one edge of the species range (as a rough model for the effects of climate change). If instead we model the kinds of habitat fragmentation that result from land use changes, things get weird.

In these fragmentation scenarios, we actually see genetic diversity _increase_ in the long term. This is super weird! How can destroying habitat result in increased genetic diversity?