March & April 2023

In March, the Hoban Tree Conservation Biology Lab had a crossover lab meeting with the Global Tree Conservation Program (GTCP). GTCP discussed their newly funded Walder Foundation grant, which will make the Morton Arboretum an IUCN official Center for Species Survival - the first one focused on trees! The Hoban lab will play a small part in their very large and exciting grant - congrats to GTCP! 

Professional News

News

• Sean Hoban traveled to an NSF funded workshop on biogeography and species’ responses to climate change.  This is the capstone workshop for a five year grant on understanding past species’ range movements from diverse data sets, focusing especially on changes in forests. It took place at the biosphere2 in Arizona and is for 27 scientists from around the world and across career stages.
  
• Emily Schumacher, research assistant in the Tree Conservation Biology lab, presented for the Global Conservation Consortia Conservation Genetics Working Group on her genetic work which provides insight and recommendations for improving the formation of metacollections. She genotyped ~500 individuals of Quercus acerifolia, a species that is the focus of the Morton Arboretum's first conservation grove, to determine how well collections of this species perform at representing its genetic diversity ex situ. Her results and the discussion led to some excellent discussion about the purpose and focus of conservation groves going forward.
  

Publications

• Schmidt, C., Hoban, S., Hunter, M., Paz‐Vinas, I. and Garroway, C.J., 2023. Genetic diversity and IUCN Red List status. Conservation Biology.
  • ​This study discusses the interface between the IUCN Red List (RL) and conservation of genetic diversity. By synthesizing several recent large-scale datasets, our analyses indicate that RL status is not a useful metric for species-specific decisions or prioritization about the protection of genetic diversity, nor can genetic data identify RL threat status in the absence of detailed demographic data. Our findings clearly indicate a need to develop metrics specifically designed to assess genetic diversity, including indicators recently adopted by the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. 
• Hoban, S., E.B. Bruns, M.P. Griffith, M. Hahn, A. Hipp, M. Lobdell, A. Meyer, C. Rollinson, L. Worcester, M. Westwood. 2023. Integrated Collections Development: Quantifying value of garden collections for decision making and prioritization. Botanic Gardens Conservation International-U.S.
  
  • ​The Morton Arboretum and BGCI-US present findings of a 3-year project to explore integrated collections development and collections valuation by botanic gardens. This 13-page guide showcases five dimensions of value for assessing collections. Focusing on four priority genera at the Arboretum (Malus, Quercus, Tilia and Ulmus – crabapple, oak, basswood, and elm), this guide summarizes how data was gathered, preliminary findings, and lessons learned.

Project Updates

Emily Schumacher's acorns for her hybrid acorn project also started to germinate and get huge leaves! 

Around the Arboretum

In honor of women's history month, the arboretum hosted a women in the environment series. Research assistants Emily Schumacher and Austin Koontz attended one of these talks by Tanisha Williams, PhD, one of the founders of #BlackBotanistsWeek who is a postdoc at Bucknell University. Tanisha spoke about her personal relationship with botany and how many other black women have been foundational to our understandings of planets, and also how we can connect more people of color with botany. What an incredible talk!