Research
My research aims to understand how species evolve, adapt to their environments, and how we can use this knowledge for their conservation using genomics as my core tool.
Evolutionary genomics
A major goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the forces that shape the past, present, and future of biodiversity. Species must respond to a myriad of factors in their environments that change over time, or else risk extinction. Understanding how species have responded to past changes can offer insights into how they may or may not adjust to the future.
My research uses population genomics, ecology, evolutionary biology to study how species evolve and adapt to a changing world. Much of my work uses wild and domestic canids as a study system to address evolutionary questions. I'm especially interested in integrating computational tools with large modern and ancient genomic datasets to explore how animals respond to past and present-day changes in their environments.
Representative publications
LM Hennelly, B Habib, S Modi, EK Rueness, P Gaubert, BN Sacks. 2021. Ancient divergence of Indian and Tibetan wolves revealed by recombination-aware phylogenomics. Molecular Ecology 30:6687-6700
LM Hennelly, G Sarwar, H Fatima, G Werhahn, S Katchel, FI Abbas, AM Khan, Z Kubanychbekov, T Mahmood, MR Khan, H Aisha, M Waseem, M Farooq, BN Sacks. 2023. Genomic analysis of wolves from Pakistan clarifies boundaries among three divergent wolf lineages. Journal of Heredity esad066
Hennelly LM, TR Feuerborn, MHS Sinding. In review. Wolf genomics: stepping out of the dog's shadow? Current Biology – 6,000 word Invited Review
Sacks BN, KJ Mitchell, CB Quinn, LM Hennelly, MHS Sinding, MJ Statham, S Preckler-Quisquater, SR Fain, L Kistler, SL Vanderzwan, JA Meachen, EA Ostrander, LAF Frantz. 2021. Pleistocene origins, western ghost lineages, and the emerging phylogeographic history of the red wolf and coyote. Molecular Ecology https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16048
Conservation
Genomics provides a powerful tool to characterize biodiversity. A key challenge is how to apply this knowledge to inform management decisions and better assess extinction risk.
A major goal of my research is to use genomics as a tool to inform conservation. This can include to aid in delineating conservation units, estimating population sizes, and holistically evaluate taxonomy. Along the way, I'm interested in assessing the genomic impact of anthropogenic change on wildlife populations. Numerous avenues are possible for this, from using museum specimens to assessing inbreeding and deleterious genetic load. Pairing genomic research with documenting the natural history of poorly understood species is a top priority. Such studies we have done include studying morphology, bioacoutistics, habitat associations, and wildlife interactions with humans.
Representative publications
Hennelly LM, Barbara R Parreira, Ash Noble, Camilla Scharff-Olsen, M. Çisel Kemahlı Aytekin, Çağan H. Şekercioğlu, Pavel Kosintsev, Ladislav Paule, Pavel Hulva, Hans Stenoien, Bilal Habib, Hira Fatima, Ghulam Sarwar, Frank Hailer, Xin Sun, Nuno Filipes Gomes Martin, M Thomas P Gilbert, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding, Benjamin N Sacks, Shyam Gopalakrishnan. In review. Complex ancestry in southern regions and drivers of continental-level genetic diversity in wolves of Asia. Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Hennelly LM, B Habib, H Root-Gutteridge, V Palacios, D Passilongo. 2017. Howl variation across Himalayan, North African, Indian and Holarctic wolf clades: tracing divergence in the world’s oldest wolf lineages using acoustics. Current Zoology 63(3): 341-348
G Werhahn, C Auguliaro, M Kabir, LM Hennelly, M Chetri, HA Hikmani, A Mohammadi, YV Jhala, DW Macdonald, MS Farhadinia. In review. Asia's wolves and synergies with big cats. Conservation Letters
Hamid A, T Mahmood, H Fatima, LM Hennelly, R Akrim, A Hussain, M Waseem. 2019. Origin, ecology, and human conflict of grey wolf (Canis lupus) in Suleiman Range, South Waziristan, Pakistan. Mammalia 83(6): 539-551.
Sadhukhan S, LM Hennelly, B Habib. 2019. Characterising the vocal repertoire of the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes). PloS ONE 14(10): e021618
H Fatima, T Mahmood, LM Hennelly, M Farooq, N Munawar, W Ali, BN Sacks. 2023. Distributional patterns and habitat association of sympatric carnivores in Margalla Hills National Park, Pakistan, and a comparison of conventional versus identification in carnivore scatology. Animal Biology 1:1-20
Molecular basis of adaptive and complex traits
Animals adapt in diverse ways to their environments. What genetic changes underlie these adaptations? And what are the sources of genetic variation, is it standing genetic variation or new mutations?
A rich system to explore these questions is in dogs and wolves. With growing -omics resources available for wolves, it is not possible to study the genetic basis of core differences between dogs and wolves. I'm just finishing a project exploring the genetics of reproductive trait differences in dogs and wolves, especially the loss of reproductive seasonality in dogs. I also have a keen interest in studying the genetics of undercoat differences in wolves, such as the lean undercoats in Arabian wolves to thick undercoats in Arctic wolves. A rich resource of dog genomes allows us a better ability to identify coat-related genes and how they vary according to phenotypic variation in wolves.
Representative publications
Plassais J, BM vonHoldt, HG Parker, A Carmagnini, N Dubos, I Papa, K Bevant, T Derrien, LM Hennelly, DT Whitaker, AC Harris, AN Hogan, HJ Huson, VF Zaibert, A Linderholm, J Haile, T Fest, B Habib, BN Sacks, N Benecke, AK Outram, MV Sablin, M Germonpre, G Larson, L Frantz, EA Ostrander. 2022. Natural and human-driven selection of a single non-coding body size variant in ancient and modern canids. Current Biology 32(4): 889-897