Partner: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW)
Objectives
The objective of Use Case 3 is to integrate abundance data from fruit fly species of the genus Drosophila with genomic data from Drosophila melanogaster—one of the best-studied model organisms and a globally distributed human commensal—alongside comprehensive environmental and climate information. This interdisciplinary approach aims to uncover how environmental factors shape the ecology and genetic variation of fruit flies and drive evolutionary processes.
Use case 3 is taking advantage of previously available genomic datasets from European Drosophila melanogaster populations to investigate associations between mutation frequencies and environmental variation to identify genes potentially under spatially varying selection. Additionally, collections of Drosophila samples in the City of Vienna further allow to assess genetic variation and species abundance in urban environments.
Therefore, our use case has two overarching goals:
- To assess the influence of geography, environment and climate on genetic variation on natural fly populations on a continent-wide scale. By combining population genomics with environmental data, the project aims to uncover genetic targets affected by environmental selection pressures.
- To assess the impact of urbanization on the ecology and evolution by investigating abundance and genetic variation in flies from the city of Vienna integrating citizen science strategies. Our project aims to test how urban factors of soil sealing, pollution, and habitat fragmentation affect survival and adaptation in Drosophila species in the face of ongoing biodiversity loss and climate change.
More details on the specific research questions and the workflow of our project can be found in the FAIRiCUBE digital library and is documented in detail on GitHUB.
Achievements
Overall, Use Case 3 has advanced our understanding of the relationship between environmental factors and biodiversity. By integrating diverse datasets and employing innovative analytical techniques, the project shed light on urban Drosophila species facing global environmental changes in a Citizen Science Project. We found that structured urban environments had a major impact on species abundance which indicates that Drosophila may serve as robust predictors for anthropogenic impact on ecosystems (see here). Moreover, we found that citizen science on urban Drosophila ecology improved the perception and biodiversity awareness of participating citizen scientists (see here).
More information about our Citizen Science project can be found here: https://nhmvienna.github.io/ViennaCityFly/
We further investigated how environmental factors influence genetic variation in Drosophila melanogaster populations across Europe. In this use case, we leveraged comprehensive, publicly available Earth observation data on climate and land use. Our analyses revealed that more than 18% of the genetic variation in European populations can be explained by environmental differences, with insecticide application and climatic factors playing dominant roles in driving adaptive evolution.
Possible future applications
The approaches developed in Use Case 3 can be extended to both model and non-model organisms, facilitating comparative studies of urban adaptation and environmental stress. By integrating remote sensing, genetic, and ecological data, this framework provides a foundation for predictive models that link climate and land-use change to evolutionary dynamics. Such integrative methods hold significant potential for advancing research on biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes and for guiding conservation strategies in rapidly changing environments.
Dive deeper in the data and outcomes in this interactive map.
Martin Kapun briefly introduces this use case in the following video clip.