Ungulates in Changing Habitats: Ecological Responses, Population Connectivity, and Adaptive Potential

Ungulates occupy environments ranging from deserts and grasslands to forests, alpine systems, and increasingly human-modified landscapes. Understanding how variation and change in these habitats influence ungulate populations requires linking patterns of habitat use and movement with demographic, phenotypic, and genetic responses. This Research Topic aims to bring together studies that examine these links across spatial and temporal scales. We particularly encourage research integrating habitat characteristics, environmental gradients, movement or distribution data, population connectivity, phenotypic variation, and genomic information. Rather than assuming that environmental associations necessarily represent evolutionary adaptation, the collection seeks to distinguish among behavioral and ecological responses, phenotypic plasticity, demographic and genetic consequences of habitat change, and well-supported evidence for local adaptation. Recent developments in biologging, remote sensing, ecological modelling, landscape genetics, and population and landscape genomics provide new opportunities to investigate how habitat heterogeneity and environmental change shape ungulate populations and their capacity to persist under changing conditions.Ungulates occur across some of the world's most environmentally heterogeneous and rapidly changing terrestrial landscapes. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, infrastructure development, land-use transformation, and other anthropogenic pressures are altering habitat availability, quality, and connectivity, with consequences for movement, resource use, demographic processes, and gene flow. Ungulates may respond through shifts in habitat selection, movement and distribution, phenotypic plasticity, or changes in population connectivity and genetic variation. Over longer timescales, environmental heterogeneity may also contribute to adaptive differentiation, although demonstrating such processes in free-ranging, long-lived species requires particularly strong evidence. Integrating ecological observations with spatial, demographic, phenotypic, and genomic information can therefore provide a more rigorous understanding of how ungulates respond to habitat variation and environmental change and inform their conservation and management.We welcome studies that explicitly examine relationships between habitat or environmental variation and ecological, demographic, phenotypic, or genetic responses of wild ungulates. Relevant themes include: • habitat selection and habitat-use strategies across spatial and temporal scales;• movement, dispersal, migration, and population connectivity in heterogeneous or fragmented landscapes; • responses to climate change, land-use change, infrastructure, and other habitat alterations; • integration of remote sensing, biologging, and ecological modelling to characterize habitat–population relationships; • landscape genetics and genomics examining how habitat features influence gene flow and population structure; • and genotype–environment or phenotype–environment relationships relevant to adaptive potential. Studies making claims of local adaptation should provide evidence beyond neutral population differentiation alone and clearly distinguish adaptive inference from ecological association, phenotypic plasticity, and demographic or historical processes. Comparative studies are welcome when they directly advance understanding of habitat-related responses in ungulates. Topic editors: Xinghu Qin, Defu Hu, Isa-Rita Russo, Gang Liu, William Sherwin Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85713/ungulates-in-changing-habitats-ecological-responses-population-connectivity-and-adaptive-potential