August & September, 2025

Overall

• In early September, Sean and Austin along with several members of Science and Conservation (Murphy Westwood, Silvia Alvarez Clare, Kate Good, and Amy Byrne) hosted collaborators on an IMLS National Leadership grant project (described here) about the use of genetic diversity and concepts in development and curation of botanical garden collections/metacollections. Visitors represented botanical research, horticulture, curation, crop diversity, and geospatial science, from Huntsville BG, Davis Arboretum, Chicago BG, Colorado State University, Huntington BG and Atlanta BG. The team reflected on grant progress, determined outreach and training opportunities for sharing the results of the studies, and identified exciting new avenues for future research and collaborations.
• While in town, Austin and Sean also got to catch up and ride bikes around the Arboretum and the surrounding areas, and Sean pointed out some butternut individuals! The lab also had a retreat where we talked about ongoing projects, future goals in the lab, and how we can improve. 
• Welcome to 2 new members of the lab!
  • Selu Adams has joined as a PhD student at the University of Chicago! Selu has prior experience working at the Arboretum in Nate Maren's group and also with the Forest Service. Selu is "interested in using genetic, ecological, and physiological approaches to understand how novel pests and pathogens affect tree species and their ability to adapt to other challenges, such as climate change".
  • Catherine Dell’Olio has joined as this year's RaMP student! Catherine will be working with Emma and Sean on their butternut research.
    
• From September 2-12, Emma and Catherine completed a major field expedition in Vermont relating to the threatened butternut tree, Juglans cinerea. They collected data on tree health and environmental conditions in order to better understand how adult trees and seedlings persist under the threat of a fungal disease called butternut canker. They measured disease severity, tree vigor, light conditions, competition, and other aspects of the largest known butternut tree population. In collaboration with key partners, they also hosted indigenous youth to collect butternut seeds and learn to identify some of the other tree species in the forest.

Presentations

• Sean gave an invited virtual presentation at a Training School for the EU COST Action GENOA (Genetic Nature Observation and Action), held at the beginning of September in Stockholm. There were about 25 participants who attended a presentation on the practical considerations of monitoring genetic diversity using genetic indicators (frequency of monitoring, observer error, and proportion of populations and species to monitor).