April 2022

The (Chicago-based) members of the Hoban lab met up this month to chat with Loren Ladd, our former RTF and REEF fellow who is graduating college next month and starting work at a vineyard in the Willamette Valley. Congratulations Loren, we wish you all the best (and are eternally jealous!!)

At the end of April, we finally got some warmer weather in Lisle and were able to enjoy a bike ride around the Arboretum! We were joined by Marvin Lo and Dr. Luke McCormack (members of the Roots Lab, with the Center for Tree Science), and Colby Borchetta, a former CTS Research Assistant. Congrats to Colby and good luck on the move out to Virginia!

• Presentations:
  • Sean Hoban presented to the BGCI Global Conservation Consortia (virtually) about conserving rare plants ex situ. Emily Schumacher, Austin Koontz, Bethany Zumwalde and Kaylee Rosenberger also attended this. About 40 people attended, a mix of garden professionals (curators, leadership, on the ground conservationists) and researchers.  ​
• Publications: 
  • ​Sean Hoban led a large collaborative group of 26 scientists to describe the state of the art of Essential Biodiversity Variables and their importance for conserving genetic diversity. The paper describes four important measures of genetic composition, recent efforts to compile data from hundreds of studies around the world, advances in modeling, data standards and repositories, and communication to policy makers. The paper is published open access in Biological Reviews, one of the leading journals for reviewing the state of biological sciences. The paper came about via Sean’s collaboration with GEO BON, a global group dedicated to improving the use of biodiversity observations to decision makers and the scientific community
    • Hoban, S., Archer, F.I., Bertola, L.D., Bragg, L.D., et al., 2022. Global genetic diversity status and trends: towards a suite of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) for genetic composition. Biological Reviews. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12852 ​​​