News Published: 15 April  2025, updated 16 May 2025

In this month’s webinar on the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, we learned about Indicators for assessing and reporting on genetic diversity for the GSPC. Genetic diversity is important for biodiversity restoration, management, protection, monitoring, climate adaptation and benefit sharing (GSPC actions 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, and 13).

This webinar explored how we can use indicators to monitor and better understand genetic diversity, with key examples of work already underway and how this knowledge can be used to better inform the public and policy makers. Additional progress and news from the GSPC were also shared.

Our presenters were Dr Sean Hoban (The Morton Arboretum) and Dr Alicia Mastretta-Yanes (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). Both are leading plant geneticists and conservation biologists with extensive experience in setting up indicators for assessing genetic diversity and working with communities to gather biodiversity data and use of citizen science. They co-lead the Coalition for Conservation Genetics, which aims to work together to inform policy and protect genetic diversity.

Genetic diversity indicators and reporting contributes to a wider framework for reporting and monitoring of activities towards GSPC implementation that is currently being designed.

Resources

The links to the relevant papers are:

• Mastretta‐Yanes, A., da Silva, J.M., Grueber, C.E., Castillo‐Reina, L., Köppä, V., Forester, B.R., Funk, W.C., Heuertz, M., Ishihama, F., Jordan, R. and Mergeay, J., 2024. Multinational evaluation of genetic diversity indicators for the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Ecology Letters, 27(7), p.e14461. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.14461
• Hoban, S., da Silva, J.M., Hughes, A., Hunter, M.E., Kalamujić Stroil, B., Laikre, L., Mastretta-Yanes, A., Millette, K., Paz-Vinas, I., Bustos, L.R. and Shaw, R.E., 2024. Too simple, too complex, or just right? Advantages, challenges, and guidance for indicators of genetic diversity. Bioscience, 74(4), pp.269-280. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/4/269/7625302

Guideline materials and documentation for the Genetic Diversity Indicators of the monitoring framework for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

To find out more about Conservation Genetics follow the link to the Coalition for Conservation Genetics

If you missed it watch the recording here.