To maintain evolutionary potential, genetic diversity, the raw material upon which natural selection acts, must be conserved. As such, ex situ seed collections remain invaluable repositories of genetic diversity. However, questions remain regarding the degree to which collections preserve genetic diversity. A molecular passport, a genetic record sampled from an individual, geo‐referenced maternal seed donor, can complement tra...

Understanding the evolutionary processes underlying range‐wide genomic variation is critical to designing effective conservation and restoration strategies. Evaluating the influence of connectivity, demographic change and environmental adaptation for threatened species can be invaluable to proactive conservation of evolutionary potential. In this study, we assessed genomic variation across the range of Fraxinus latifolia , a f...

Genetic diversity is critical for adaptation in response to changing environments and provides a valuable metric for predicting species’ extinction risk. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and broader scientific community have acknowledged that genetic diversity is a critical component to biodiversity conservation. However, there remain gaps in the incorporation or application of genetic data to extincti...

Population demographic changes, alongside landscape, geographic and climate heterogeneity, can influence the timing, stability and extent of introgression where species hybridise. Thus, quantifying interactions across diverged lineages, and the relative contributions of interspecific genetic exchange and selection to divergence at the genome‐wide level is needed to better understand the drivers of hybrid zone formation and mai...

Understanding the contribution of neutral and adaptive evolutionary processes to population differentiation is often necessary for better informed management and conservation of rare species. In this study, we focused on Pinus torreyana Parry (Torrey pine), one of the world's rarest pines, endemic to one island and one mainland population in California. Small population size, low genetic diversity, and susceptibility to abioti...

Large‐scale fishing effort in the waters of tropical and lower income countries is predominantly driven by ‘distant water fishing fleets’ often owned by companies based in a small number of countries and has been associated with a range of negative environmental and social outcomes. West Africa is an example where such fleets are a dominant feature. In the waters of Guinea‐Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana, 75% o...

Paralytic shellfish poison (PSP) is a human health concern for shellfish aquaculture and wild harvest. This paper discusses lessons learned from a forecasting program for PSP in coastal Maine, USA, designed based on stakeholder input, and run in an operational mode for the 2021 season. The forecast uses a deep learning algorithm to make site-specific, probabilistic forecasts at a weekly forecast range for toxin levels measured...

Purpose of Review Assisted migration is increasingly proposed as a proactive management strategy to mitigate the consequences of maladaptation predicted under climate change. Exploring the social and academic structure of the field, its research gaps, and future research directions can help further the understanding and facilitate the implementation of assisted migration strategies. Here we used bibliometric analysis to examin...

Over the past 50 years conservation genetics has developed a substantive toolbox to inform species management. One of the most long‐standing tools available to manage genetics—the pedigree—has been widely used to characterize diversity and maximize evolutionary potential in threatened populations. Now, with the ability to use high throughput sequencing to estimate relatedness, inbreeding, and genome‐wide functional diversity,...

Maintenance of biodiversity through seed banks and botanical gardens, where the wealth of species’ genetic variation may be preserved ex situ, is a major goal of conservation. However, challenges can persist in optimizing ex situ collections if trade‐offs exist among cost, effort, and conserving species evolutionary potential, particularly when genetic data are not available. We evaluated the genetic consequences of population...

Understanding the processes underlying speciation has long been a challenge to evolutionary biologists. This spurs from difficulties teasing apart the various mechanisms that contribute to the evolution of barriers to reproduction. The study by Rafati et al. ( ) in this issue of Molecular Ecology combines spatially explicit whole‐genome resequencing with evaluation of differential gene expression across individuals with mixed...

Current rates of climate change require organisms to respond through migration, phenotypic plasticity, or genetic changes via adaptation. We focused on questions regarding species’ and populations’ ability to respond to climate change through adaptation. Specifically, the role adaptive introgression, movement of genetic material from the genome of 1 species into the genome of another through repeated interbreeding, may play in...