Advances in genome-scale DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized genetic research on ancient organisms, extinct species, and past environments. When it is recoverable after hundreds or thousands of years of unintended preservation, "ancient DNA" (or aDNA) is often highly degraded, necessitating specialized handling and analytical approaches. Paleogenomics defines the field of reconstructing and analyzing the genomes of historic or long-dead organisms, most often through comparison with modern representatives of the same or similar species. The opportunity to isolate and study paleogenomes has radically transformed many fields, spanning biology, anthropology, agriculture, and medicine. Examples include understanding evolutionary relationships of extinct species known only from fossils, the domestication of plants and animals, and the evolution and geographical spread of certain pathogens. This pioneering book presents a snapshot view of the history, current status, and future prospects of paleogenomics, taking a broad viewpoint that covers a range of topics and organisms to provide an up-to-date status of the applications, challenges, and promise of the field. This book is intended for a variety of readerships, including upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, professionals and experts in the field, as well as anyone excited by the extraordinary insights that paleogenomics offers.

Population genomics is revolutionizing wildlife biology, conservation, and management by providing key and novel insights into genetic, population and landscape-level processes in wildlife, with unprecedented power and accuracy. This pioneering book presents the advances and potential of population genomics in wildlife, outlining key population genomics concepts and questions in wildlife biology, population genomics approaches that are specifically applicable to wildlife, and application of population genomics in wildlife population and evolutionary biology, ecology, adaptation and conservation and management. It is important for students, researchers, and wildlife professionals to understand the growing set of population genomics tools that can address issues from delineation of wildlife populations to assessing their capacity to adapt to environmental change. This book brings together leading experts in wildlife population genomics to discuss the key areas of the field, as well as challenges, opportunities and future prospects of wildlife population genomics.

Population genomics is revolutionizing wildlife biology, conservation, and management by providing key and novel insights into genetic, population and landscape-level processes in wildlife, with unprecedented power and accuracy. This pioneering book presents the advances and potential of population genomics in wildlife, outlining key population genomics concepts and questions in wildlife biology, population genomics approaches that are specifically applicable to wildlife, and application of population genomics in wildlife population and evolutionary biology, ecology, adaptation and conservation and management. It is important for students, researchers, and wildlife professionals to understand the growing set of population genomics tools that can address issues from delineation of wildlife populations to assessing their capacity to adapt to environmental change. This book brings together leading experts in wildlife population genomics to discuss the key areas of the field, as well as challenges, opportunities and future prospects of wildlife population genomics.

Population genomics has provided unprecedented opportunities to unravel the mysteries of marine organisms in the oceans' depths. The world's oceans, which make up 70% of our planet, encompass diverse habitats and host numerous unexplored populations and species. Population genomics studies of marine organisms are rapidly emerging and have the potential to transform our understanding of marine populations, species, and ecosystems, providing insights into how these organisms are evolving and how they respond to different stimuli and environments. This knowledge is critical for understanding the fundamental aspects of marine life, how marine organisms will respond to environmental changes, and how we can better protect and preserve marine biodiversity and resources. This book brings together leading experts in the field to address critical aspects of fundamental and applied research in marine species and share their research and insights crucial for understanding marine ecosystem diversity and function. It also discusses the challenges, opportunities and future perspectives of marine population genomics.

Population genomics has revolutionized various disciplines of biology including population, evolutionary, ecological and conservation genetics, plant and animal breeding, human health, medicine and pharmacology by allowing to address novel and long-standing questions with unprecedented power and accuracy. It employs large-scale or genome-wide genetic information and bioinformatics to address various fundamental and applied aspects in biology and related disciplines, and provides a comprehensive genome-wide perspective and new insights that were not possible before. These advances have become possible due to the development of new and low-cost sequencing and genotyping technologies and novel statistical approaches and software, bioinformatics tools, and models. Population genomics is tremendously advancing our understanding the roles of evolutionary processes, such as mutation, genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection, in shaping up genetic variation at individual loci and across the genome and populations; improving the assessment of population genetic parameters or processes such as adaptive evolution, effective population size, gene flow, admixture, inbreeding and outbreeding depression, demography, and biogeography; resolving evolutionary histories and phylogenetic relationships of extant, ancient and extinct species; understanding the genomic basis of fitness, adaptation, speciation, complex ecological and economically important traits, and disease and insect resistance; facilitating forensics, genetic medicine and pharmacology; delineating conservation genetic units; and understanding the genetic effects of resource management practices, and assisting conservation and sustainable management of genetic resources. This Population Genomics book discusses the concepts, approaches, applications and promises of population genomics in addressing most of the above fundamental and applied crucial aspects in a variety of organisms from microorganisms to humans. The book provides insights into a range of emerging population genomics topics including population epigenomics, landscape genomics, seascape genomics, paleogenomics, ecological and evolutionary genomics, biogeography, demography, speciation, admixture, colonization and invasion, genomic selection, and plant and animal domestication. This book fills a vacuum in the field and is expected to become a primary reference in Population Genomics world-wide.

Population genomics is a rapidly emerging field that has the potential to transform our understanding of how evolutionary forces shape genomic diversity among microbes. There have already been considerable advances in understanding gene flow and spread of adaptive traits, and in linking epidemiology with evolutionary biology. The current challenge is to find unifying evolutionary principles for organisms that display a wide range of reproductive biology - from highly clonal to promiscuous - and for which the vast majority have eluded cultivation. This requires interdisciplinary approaches that incorporate novel computational tools, testing of existing and novel population genetic models, and creative new ways of linking genetic diversity to ecological factors. This pioneering book will discuss the advances made and promises of population genomics in microorganisms, outlining some of the key theoretical and practical challenges for microbial population genomics, including defining and identifying populations, genomics-based reverse ecology and building appropriate tools to understand microbes in a variety of complex environments.

Population genomics has provided unprecedented opportunities to unravel the mysteries of marine organisms in the oceans' depths. The world's oceans, which make up 70% of our planet, encompass diverse habitats and host numerous unexplored populations and species. Population genomics studies of marine organisms are rapidly emerging and have the potential to transform our understanding of marine populations, species, and ecosystems, providing insights into how these organisms are evolving and how they respond to different stimuli and environments. This knowledge is critical for understanding the fundamental aspects of marine life, how marine organisms will respond to environmental changes, and how we can better protect and preserve marine biodiversity and resources. This book brings together leading experts in the field to address critical aspects of fundamental and applied research in marine species and share their research and insights crucial for understanding marine ecosystem diversity and function. It also discusses the challenges, opportunities and future perspectives of marine population genomics.