Hare research

Hare research began at the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, in 2013. In our latest project, the Research Council of Finland–funded HARECY consortium, we investigate in collaboration with the mitochondrial metabolism and bioenergetics-research group at Tampere university the evolution of life-history strategies and how the costs of metabolic adaptations influence, among other things, cell cycle regulation and thereby aging, reproduction, and cancer susceptibility, using hares as model organisms. The project continues the work of the CROSSHARES consortium, where we explored, among other aspects, the intracellular mechanisms maintaining species boundaries in lagomorphs.

We are also interested in the population genetics of Finnish hares, the adaptation mechanisms of the brown hare to northern environments, and the dispersal history of the species.

In our work we apply broad range of tools from genomics to cell and  molecular biology. To facilitate our work, as well as for the benefit of everybody working on hare genetics, we have also published the reference genomes for the mountain hare (Lepus timidus) and the brown hare (Lepus europaeus). The genomes can be accessed and viewed through the NCBI-genome browser.

Our research group has also participated in the Biodiversity Genomics Europe project with a case study in which we use the reference genomes we have assembled to investigate hybridization between the brown hare and the mountain hare, as well as to reconstruct the dispersal history of the brown hare.