Assisted gene flow is used to counteract genetic erosion in small populations of endangered species, yet an evaluation of genetic compatibility of potential donor populations and recipient populations is rare. We developed new metrics for assessing the genetic impact of genetic augmentation based on genotype identity of functional variants between donor and recipient genomes and used these metrics to evaluate options for assis...

Emerging infectious diseases in wildlife species caused by pathogenic fungi are of growing concern, yet crucial knowledge gaps remain for diseases with potentially large impacts. For example, there is detailed knowledge about host pathology and mechanisms underlying response for chytridiomycosis in amphibians and white‐nose syndrome in bats, but such information is lacking for other more recently described fungal infections. O...

Since allozymes were first used to assess genetic diversity in the 1960s and 1970s, biologists have attempted to characterize gene pools and conserve the diversity observed in domestic crops, livestock, zoos and (more recently) natural populations. Recently, some authors have claimed that the importance of genetic diversity in conservation biology has been greatly overstated. Here, we argue that a voluminous literature indicat...