Along with an international team of conservation and population geneticists, I’ve helped develop and calculate genetic diversity indicators–metrics that serve as proxies for the genetic status of a species and which can be determined with or without genetic data. These indicators are included in the Center for Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity framework. I recently coauthored a paper outlining the calculation of these indicators for nine different countries, and am currently working on calculating indicator values for North American trees.

Botanic gardens and arboreta strive to protect not just species diversity, but genetic diversity within species. This project builds off of gap analysis approaches to assess how well geographic proxies of genetic diversity work.

Using both empirical and simulation approaches, I’ve conducted research comparing SNP and microsatellite markers when measuring ex situ conservation. This work is part of the larger Global Conservation Consortium of Oaks, and was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.