November, 2025

Overall

• We hosted Kylie Roth, who has been leading our butternut fieldwork in Vermont, ffor a couple of weeks! Kylie has been documenting the health of trees impacted by the butternut canker disease, resurveying populations previously surveyed over 10 years ago, and identifying locations with healthy seedlings. She visited the lab in Chicago for 2 weeks to help assess some populations of butternut in the Chicago area and to initiate her work on an upcoming project assessing herbaria specimens of butternut trees and close relatives. She will be scoring specimens for characteristics that indicate hybridization with Japanese walnuts in order to better understand the prevalence of hybridization across the species range.
• Catherine, Kylie, and Emma scouted for and completed health assessments of butternuts in the snow on November 10. They located 20 individuals in the time they were out and found that most were in very good health despite having evidence of exposure to the butternut canker, a fungal pathogen responsible for the steep decline of this species in the past 60 years. They’re confident there are more trees in this population yet to be found and were encouraged to see so many doing well.
  
• Catherine and Kylie also mounted several Juglans specimens for the herbarium. These specimens were collected from arboretum grounds as well as sent from other botanic gardens and arboreta around the U.S. These will contribute to the Juglans collection in the herbarium but also be used for a study of the morphology of butternuts, butternut hybrids, and related species to better inform key characteristics for identifying non-hybrid butternuts in the field. Kylie will be leading on this study this winter.
  

Publications

• J M da Silva, L D Bertola, J A DeWoody, T Steeves, P Sunnucks, S T Vilaça, S Hoban. Conserving Genetic and Genomic Diversity in Accordance with the Global Biodiversity Framework. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-animal-030424-070756 (PDF of galley proofs available HERE)
  • Summary: The 2022 Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework outlines a road map guiding humanity’s relationship with nature. Genetic diversity, which underlies adaptation and fitness of species and populations, is a core part of the KMGBF. This landmark publication aims to be a foundational resource to help researchers, practitioners, and other interested parties understand the KMGBF and achieve its commitments. We address (a) the KMGBF’s terminology and scope, (b) the intersection of KMGBF targets with genetic diversity, (c) genetic monitoring for tracking progress, (d) decision frameworks to guide genetic conservation actions, and (e) emerging frontiers. A better understanding of the policy context is vital for researchers to tailor their work to help meet commitments to conserving biodiversity.
• A Koontz, G Salas, S Hoban. Genetic marker type impacts ex situ conservation minimum sample size estimates and their variance. Conservation Genetics. Open Access. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-025-01730-1  
  • Summary: This study is the product of several IMLS grants and an NSF RAMP project, and builds on advances our lab has made over the past ten years providing guidance to botanic gardens to more efficiently conserve genetic diversity. It uses simulations to determine minimum sample size estimates (MSSEs)–the number of samples needed in a metacollection to represent a proportion of the species’ wild populations’ genetic diversity–and how MSSEs shift when different genetic markers are used. We show that recommended sample sizes are higher when aiming to conserve genome-wide diversity, and that uncertainty around MSSEs is large, but can be reduced with greater genetic data. We also emphasize that caution is needed when the technique of resampling of empirical datasets is used to estimate MSSEs, if datasets are small relative to a species’ total population size.  Overall, we recommend that guidance to practitioners should account for uncertainty and the genetic marker being used.
• P Galbusera, LD Bertola, AD Ball, E von Wettberg, MW Bruford, P Helsen, S Hoban, E Fienieg, MC Quinzin, IM Russo, G Segelbacher, N Ting, LP Waits, AV Stronen, A Kopatz. 2026. Hybrids along a natural-anthropogenic gradient: improving policy and management across all levels of biodiversity. Conservation Letters. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.13158 Open Access
  • Hybridization between species is a central topic in evolution and conservation. Genetic and genomic tools now give conservationists greater ability than ever to assess hybridization in wild populations. This article discusses historic views of hybridization as a threat to biodiversity, the context of global conservation policy, increasing evidence of natural hybridization events, and benefits of hybrids in some conservation situations.  The article presents a framework for making decisions about hybrids based on scientific evidence of their impact on the environment, assessing both risks and benefits, and carefully considering thresholds for implementing interventions.
    • This article resulted from the efforts of the IUCN Conservation Specialist Group and the GBIKE conservation networks.