Genetic adaptation to pathogens and the environment in endangered primates

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and endangered. They inhabit habitats from deep forest to woodland-savannah, being the only ape in savannahs—other than humans, which experienced such transition at a key time in our evolution. Whether chimpanzees are genetically adapted to these habitats has long been unknown, despite implications for our understanding of the species and their conservation. Using hundreds of exomes from wild chimpanzees, we identified evidence of local genetic adaptation both to forests and woodland-savannahs. Wild communities are thus likely adapted to their local habitat in ways that shape their fate upon climate change. Interestingly forest groups appear adapted to the high diversity of pathogens in forests, including adaptation to malaria likely mediated by the same genes that mediate resistance and adaptation in humans, in a potential example of convergent evolution. Building on this work, we will analyse hundreds of exomes and genomes of chimpanzees to establish the influence of local adaptation in wild populations, identify selective pressures and pinpoint individual adaptations, informing conservation efforts. The project can have a fieldwork component but is largely computational. Other projects in the group include studying host adaptation to zoonotic viruses such as SIV (HIV origin), genetic effects of mating behaviour in bonobos, interplay between balancing selection and adaptive introgression, or human local adaptation with aDNA.