Invasive Insects and Their Genetic Success: Lessons for Conserving Decline Native Populations

Hilberdink, Chris (2025) Invasive Insects and Their Genetic Success: Lessons for Conserving Decline Native Populations. Bachelor's Thesis, Biology.

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Abstract

The alarming rate of declining native insect populations is reducing the genetic variation within these populations. This reduces the evolutionary potential of these populations and moreover increases risk on inbreeding depression and effects of genetic drift. A genetic paradox is however created when observing invasive insect populations. These populations experience often bottleneck events, which reduce the population genetic variation severely. Invasive species however are thriving as never before and are therefore an interesting factor to enhance insect conservation. This review focusses on the genetic success of invasive insect populations to give new insights in native insect populations conservation. The results indicate that the answer to this paradox is very complex as multiple ecological and evolutionary processes are at play. An important factor observed is that invasive insect has a higher evolutionary potential as their genome is bigger and has a higher GC content. This causes an increased genetic resource to tap into and moreover the high GC content causes a higher mutation rate increasing genetic diversity as well. Another partially explanation are ecological aspects. The global trade and travel in forming continuous pathways for invasion creating multiple introductions in novel environment of these populations. This enhances the gene flow and therefore the evolutionary potential. Moreover, climate change is an important success factor as well for insect populations. Invasive insect populations are developing at a faster rate in higher temperature environments. This creates an advantage due to global warming. This review indicated the importance of genome sequencing as a conservation tool. The genomes of invasive and native insect populations give conservationist a lot of insight in their evolutionary and ecological processes.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Beukeboom, L.W.
Degree programme:	Biology
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	29 Jan 2025 08:24
Last Modified:	29 Jan 2025 08:24
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/34630

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