April, 2025

Overall

• In early April, Sean spoke about career preparation and opportunities for early career conservation scientists at a webinar hosted by the Society for Conservation Biology, North America (recording will be available here), and also participated in a panel discussion with an audience of ~40. He also gave a seminar at Oklahoma State University with our friend and collaborator Dr. Antonio Castilla!
• Emma has been working with Jon Steele (Research Horticulturist II) on grafting wood from butternuts (Juglans cinerea) onto black walnut (Juglans nigra) rootstock in an effort to save trees which are not likely to live much longer. This is a way to preserve the genetic diversity of these individual trees, provide more trees to Arboretum ex situ collections and natural areas, and hopefully also to natural areas beyond the Arboretum grounds. It is one of many approaches our lab is taking toward safeguarding the future of butternuts, which is dying from a disease. For those in the Chicago area, there's a Know Your Arboretum all about butternut trees at 10am on May 8 in Cudahy at the Arboretum. A photo of a successfully grafted butternut is above.

Publications

• 2025. The potential of seedbank digital information in plant conservation. Roberta Gargiulo, Sean Hoban, Anne M. Visscher, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, Roberta L. C. Dayrell, Kiran L. Dhanjal-Adams, Alice R. Hudson, Charlotte E. Seal, Simon Kallow, Jan Sala, Lee Oliver, Naomi Carvey, Ted Chapman, Efisio Mattana, Clare Callow, Christopher Cockel, Michael F. Fay, Juan Viruel, Inna Birchenko, Stephanie Miles, Timothy Pearce, Paul Kersey, Elinor Breman, Kate A. Hardwick. Plants People Planet. Free Open Access
  
  • This paper, produced as a collaboration with scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, explores the potential of digitized information made available by seedbanks for improving our understanding of the intraspecific genetic diversity preserved in collections. This includes information such as the location of sampling sites, estimated population size and the number of mother plants from which seeds were collected. Challenges and opportunities of using this information are discussed.