Unravelling evolutionary responses of lagomorphs to climate perturbations: geohistorical data integration for present-day biodiversity conservation

The lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and pikas) are a successful mammalian group, which play key roles in many ecosystems (sustaining other species' communities and populations).

The ongoing climate change is pushing most of their species into the extinction, and their demise can entail the decline of their communities and ecological systems consequence of a dramatic knock-on effect.

The present project, REvoBBIT, aims to contribute to search solutions to this severe challenge from an unexplored perspective in this mammalian group: the Conservation Palaeontology.

Through the study of the bone and teeth of extinct lagomorphs, it is possible to reveal the biological strategies and evolutionary shifts of those species or populations that were resilient and survived to past global warmings and coolings. This is a very significant knowledge to be considered in the conservation decision-making process of extant relatives.

With this ultimate goal, REvoBBIT will study the extinct rabbits and hares from Sierra de Atapuerca (Pleistocene), which endured important glacial and interglacial periods, using trusty morphological methods and frontier molecular and geochemical techniques.

Teeth and postcranial bones will be assessed disclosing their weight, diet, genetic size and diversity, as well as the past environmental conditions where they lived (temperature, humidity, etc.).

The subsequent statistical analysis will let to identify the most significant ecological stressors and drivers that were involved in the evolution of lagomorphs.

The results obtained in REvoBBIT will be the first step to build a big deep-time database of the lagomorph palaeobiology, and to develop predictive models of biotic response.

At present, the significant knowledge gap in the palaeobiology and palaeoecology of this mammalian group prevents that palaeontological data will be considered in the protocol conservation design of extant relatives.