January & February 2023

We said goodbye to long-term Hoban lab member Emily Beckman-Bruns this year after her seventh year at the Morton Arboretum. Best wishes in your future endeavors Emily!
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News

• Sean Hoban, Tree Conservation Biologist, attended the annual meeting (virtually) of the Advisory Board of the European project FORGENIUS, a 7 million euro, 10 country project assessing the resilience of forest resources across Europe.  The project is using remote sensing, physiology, genomics, on the ground surveys, GIS tools, and models integrating all of this data to determine resilience of approximately 3000 conservation units. These units are designed to safeguard the adaptive capacity of dozens of tree species through the EuForGen collaboration.  The project will also update EufGIS digital infrastructure and create new tools for accessing and visualizing all data collected, in a manner that the public and policy makers can understand.
  
• Sean Hoban, Tree Conservation Biologist, will be traveling to Zurich Switzerland to give an invited talk and participate in a multi-day collaborative workshop on monitoring changes in species’ adaptive capacity, genetic health and genetic diversity.  The workshop is convened by ETH Zurich and the Swiss Institute for Forest and Snow.  About 50 participants from around the world will participate.  The workshop aims to share experiences and approaches that different countries are using, and will directly contribute to the design and improvement of ongoing monitoring programs in Switzerland and Sweden that are sampling threatened species repeatedly over time for DNA analysis to understand changes.

Publications

• ​The Tree Conservation Biology lab contributed an article to the Kew Millenium Seed Bank Partnership newsletter, Samara.  The topic was to summarize our work to document, manage and improve ex situ collections of the rare and IUCN Critically Endangered Quercus acerifolia, maple-leaf oak.  With partners united by the GCCO including Stephen’s Lake Park Arboretum and the City of Columbia Parks & Recreation Department, we are helping design seed orchards that could produce seed for supplementing wild populations – and ensure a future for this species.  You can download the newsletter here.
  • Citation: Hoban, Schumacher and Koontz, 2022. “Morton Arboretum guiding ex situ collections of Critically Endangered oak.” Samara: The International Newsletter of the Millenium Seedbank Partnership. Issue 38.
• Heuertz, M… Hoban, S… 19 others… Garniere-Gere, P.  2023. The application gap: Genomics for biodiversity and ecosystem service management. Biological Conservation. 278.
• Sean Hoban, Michael W Bruford, Jessica M da Silva, W Chris Funk, Richard Frankham, Michael J Gill, Catherine E Grueber, Myriam Heuertz, Margaret E Hunter, Francine Kershaw, Robert C Lacy, Caroline Lees, Margarida Lopes-Fernandes, Anna J MacDonald, Alicia Mastretta-Yanes, Philip JK McGowan, Mariah H Meek, Joachim Mergeay, Katie L Millette, Cinnamon S Mittan-Moreau, Laetitia M Navarro, David O’Brien, Rob Ogden, Gernot Segelbacher, Ivan Paz-Vinas, Cristiano Vernesi, Linda Laikre. Genetic diversity goals and targets have improved, but remain insufficient for clear implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. 2023. Conservation Genetics. 
• Chloé Schmidt, Sean Hoban, Margaret Hunter, Ivan Paz‐Vinas, Colin J Garroway. Genetic diversity and IUCN Red List status. 2023. Conservation Biology.