October 2023

Events and Presentations:
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• Members from the Global Tree Conservation Program (Silvia, Kate and Victor) and the Conservation Biology group (Emily, Austin and Gavin) attended the Rare Plant Research and Mentoring Program (RAMP) Annual Symposium in Atlanta Botanic Garden. During this meeting, Research Aides Victor García and Gavin Salas presented an update on their research and participated in multiple career development workshops and activities. This activity is part of the NSF-funded Rare Plant RAMP Project. Next year’s symposium will be hosted at Morton Arboretum.  
  
  
• Sean Hoban presented a seminar at University of Toronto October 6. He also spent the day meeting about 15 graduate students and postdocs in the department. The audience for the seminar was about 30 students and professors. Sean also presented a seminar virtually at the University of Memphis on October 19 and met 6 students and postdocs to discuss their work.
• Sean Hoban attended the GEO BON (Group on Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network) meeting “Monitoring Biodiversity for Action,” in Montreal, Canada. This meeting brought together many kinds of scientists in biodiversity monitoring, reporting, and policy- from eDNA, to satellites, to community based monitoring. At the conference Sean networked with representatives from IUCN, GBIF, BGCI, the Quebec biodiversity center, and the Forest People’s Program. Sean also gave a talk titled “Assessing genetic diversity in the absence of genetic data, using indicators” to an audience of about 30.

Publications :

• Schumacher, E. K., Wu, Y., Byrne, A., Gray, S., Ladd, L., Griffith, M. P., & Hoban, S. (2023). Examining previously neglected aspects of ex situ gene conservation in two IUCN Threatened plant species: rare alleles, redundancy, ecogeographic representativeness, and relatedness. https://doi.org/10.1086/728186​

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