April, 2026

Summary

• Sean gave a presentation at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville titled “Meeting the needs of conservation in practice, with DNA data.” There were more than 50 students and professors in attendance. He also spoke about career paths and working with policy with about 20 undergraduate students. While in Knoxville, Sean also toured the Tennessee Tree Improvement Program, a 65 year old tree breeding and seed sourcing program focusing on locally adapted seed of trees used in reforestation, as well as trees of conservation concern (especially oaks), and he met with Dr. Meg Staton who leads the TreeSnap app and various projects on ash, chestnut, and butternut disease resistance.

Publications

• 2026. Ne Does Not Provide Sufficient Information on Allelic Variation: Suggestions to Fill the Gap. Sean M Hoban, Brenna R Forester, Roberta Gargiulo, Austin C Koontz, Alicia Mastretta‐Yanes, Joachim Mergeay, Ivan Paz‐Vinas, Coalition for Conservation Genetics, Linda Laikre. Evolutionary Applications. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eva.70219
  • Summary: Conservation needs simple, practical metrics for rapid assessment, and effective population size (Ne) has been proposed as one such tool to assess genetic vulnerability. This paper reflects on some solutions to the problem of relying on only one metric. We argue that the Ne 500 indicator should be paired with additional measures to give a more complete picture, such as using census population declines, assessment of population structure, and simulations.
  • Relevance: This paper supports an ongoing project funded by the Walder Foundation, to assess genetic health of 200 tree species of North America.