Research Interests & Bio:
My research focuses on conservation genomics, inbreeding, inbreeding depression, and the persistence of small and isolated wildlife populations, with an emphasis on apex predators. I am particularly interested in how habitat fragmentation, restricted gene flow, and human development shape genetic diversity and population health in wide-ranging species such as mountain lions (Puma concolor).
My work uses genomic and long-term ecological data to understand the consequences of isolation and identify processes that may improve or further compromise population persistence. Mountain lions provide a valuable system for studying these questions because their large spatial requirements increasingly bring them into landscapes fragmented by highways, urban development, and other human infrastructure. By integrating genomic measures of inbreeding and diversity with pedigrees, movement histories, and population-level information, I aim to better understand how connectivity—or the lack of it—affects genetic health across generations.
More broadly, I am interested in translating conservation genomic research into information that can support wildlife management. Identifying genetically isolated populations, evaluating the consequences of restricted gene flow, and understanding which components of genetic diversity are being lost can help inform decisions about habitat connectivity and long-term population conservation. My goal is to contribute research that improves our understanding of the evolutionary and ecological processes affecting small populations while providing information relevant to the conservation of large carnivores in increasingly human-dominated landscapes.
Before pursuing graduate studies, I served for eight years as a medic in the U.S. Air Force. My transition from medicine to ecology continues to influence my interest in biological health and my approach to conservation research, particularly my interest in connecting genomic variation with the health and persistence of wildlife populations.
Current Research:
My dissertation research examines how population isolation and inbreeding affect the genetic health of mountain lions in California, using complementary genomic approaches to investigate both genome-wide and functional genetic diversity.
My first dissertation chapter focuses on mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California, where major freeways and urban development have severely restricted connectivity. Using more than two decades of National Park Service monitoring data together with pedigree information, genotyping-by-sequencing, and whole-genome sequencing, I evaluated genetic structure, gene flow, and inbreeding on opposite sides of US-101. This work examines how restricted movement across a major freeway has shaped genomic inbreeding and multigenerational patterns of relatedness, as well as the genetic contributions of the small number of immigrants that successfully crossed the freeway and reproduced. I am also using whole-genome data to evaluate recent inbreeding and genomic indicators associated with risk of inbreeding depression. Together, these analyses provide a genomic assessment of the population prior to increased connectivity expected from the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing.
My second dissertation chapter expands this work from genome-wide diversity to functional genetic variation related to immune function. Using existing short-read whole-genome sequencing data from mountain lion populations across California, I am investigating how reliably variation in major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and Toll-like receptor (TLR) genes can be recovered in a non-model wildlife species. This work evaluates the challenges of reconstructing immune-gene variation from short-read genomic data—including duplicated loci, complex genomic regions, and haplotype recovery—and establishes a conservative framework for validating these data before making population-level inferences. Ultimately, I aim to examine how patterns of adaptive immune diversity compare with genome-wide genetic diversity across California mountain lion populations that differ in connectivity and inbreeding.
Together, these projects examine genetic health at multiple scales, from genome-wide patterns of inbreeding and recent shared ancestry to variation in genes directly involved in immune function. My broader goal is to understand what genetic diversity is lost as wildlife populations become isolated, what may be restored through gene flow, and how genomic information can be used to better evaluate the long-term persistence of small populations.
Please reach out if you have any questions:
casrodrig@ucdavis.edu