Scientists assemble the Canada Jay genome to better understand climate impacts on wildlife

A fearless, fluffy native of Canada’s boreal forests, the Canada Jay has soft grey plumage, a pale face with a darker cap, and a short black bill. Also called the Whiskyjack, it is one of very few Canadian birds to have an English vernacular name borrowed from a native language—in this case, from the Cree wîskicâhk. Known for its bold and curious nature, the Canada Jay often approaches people in the wild and is famous for caching food to survive harsh northern winters.

But with climate change, Canada Jays are getting into trouble and that is a problem researchers think Canadians should care about.

Scientists at The Centre for Applied Genomics (TCAG) at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), a node of CGEn — Canada’s national platform for genome sequencing and analysis — are using the latest sequencing technologies to assemble a high-quality genome to help researchers understand the Canada Jay’s adaptability to changing climates.

A genome is the complete set of genetic instructions (DNA) in an organism, acting as a blueprint for its structure, function, growth, and reproduction.

“Forty or 50 years ago, you would see Canada Jays just about everywhere in Algonquin Park, Ontario, but now most of the old jay territories have gone vacant and you have to enquire at the Park Visitor Centre to find out where you might find one of the Park’s few remaining pairs,” says Dan Strickland, who has studied the jays for decades and pioneered research into their unique winter survival strategies, and captured samples for the sequencing effort. “They stay with their mates as long as both birds are alive, and the members of a territorial pair rarely leave each other's sides.”

The bird is well adapted to cold climates, even nesting in late winter when the landscape is still covered with snow. The food items they store and depend on to survive the winter and feed their young are all perishable—berries, mushrooms, bits of vertebrate flesh, insects and spiders. Studies co-led by Strickland and Ryan Norris, a wildlife ecology Professor at the University of Guelph, strongly suggest that warmer winter temperatures are causing increased degradation of those perishable food stores and thus explain the lower production of young Canada Jays needed to replace the inevitable losses of older jays.

“Simply put, Canada Jays need to preserve their stored food by putting it in our country’s giant outdoor refrigerator and now the warming temperatures brought on by climate change are causing ‘fridge failure’ — at least at the southern edge of its range,” explains Norris.

Perisoreus canadensis (Perisoreus, a classic Greek word meaning “hoarder,” referring to the bird’s food-storing behaviour, and canadensis, a Neo-Latin term meaning "of Canada”) was known as the Canada Jay from the early 1800s until 1957, when the American Ornithological Society (AOS), changed the bird’s common name to Gray Jay, upsetting many Canadians from a scientific, nationalistic and Canadian-spelling perspective (they used American “gray” instead of Canadian “grey”). Strickland led a proposal to the AOS to change it back. After a 9-to-1 vote by a committee of the AOS, “Canada Jay” was restored as the species’ official common name in 2018.

The Canada Jay occurs in Alaska, northern New England, and in some mountainous areas of the western U.S. but is otherwise an exclusively Canadian bird, being found in all 13 provinces and territories. While it is often considered to be our national bird, the Canadian government has yet to give any bird that status.

“We hoped that reclaiming the name would have inspired the government to adopt the Canada Jay as our national bird, and we can hope that it may yet happen. There certainly is huge support from both environmental groups and grassroots Canadians,” explains Strickland.

“There are 60 plants and animals that have 'canadensis' in their scientific names. Nine of them are birds, and many will be impacted by climate change,” observes Si Lok, Technology Lead, TCAG. “Some will adapt and others will not. When we compare the genomes of these species, we can start to understand what is different from a biological perspective.”

TCAG along with CGEn’s other two nodes (Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver and McGill Genome Centre in Montreal) are sequencing the genomes of several important species and adding the data to public databases that researchers can use for studies in conservation, biodiversity, ecology and other applications. CGEn supports speciality technology development initiatives like the Canada Jay project, and enables major national initiatives, including CGEn’s CanSeq150 program and the Canadian BioGenome Project.

“The team sequenced the genome of Canada’s national animal, the Canadian beaver, in 2017 for the country’s 150^th birthday and now, prompted by the threats on our sovereignty, we thought it timely to exert our dominion over our de facto national bird by sequencing its genome,” says Stephen Scherer, Director of TCAG and Chief of Research at SickKids.

Species selected for sequencing are important for cultural, environmental and economic reasons, making this work uniquely Canadian. Other examples include the Snowshoe hare and Canada lynx, which will both be affected by climate change, as they are considered “cold specialists,” explains Lok, as well as the Blue jay, which may provide a powerful genomic comparator for the Canada Jay.

Visit CGEn.ca to see the original full release.

Photo credits: Teaser photo by Dan Strickland; illustration by Jocelyn Lee.