Thread by @sgalla32

Check out our latest preprint: the relevance of pedigrees in the conservation genomics era bit.ly/3wCO7DH. TLDR: it’s not either/or when it comes to #pedigrees & #genomics. Having both helps researchers address more conservation questions than one data set alone. 🧵 1/10

Conservation #genetics 🧬 has developed a substantive toolbox 🔧 to inform species management. While much discussion has been dedicated towards genomic advances, there remains one long-standing tool in #ConGen that is often overlooked: the pedigree. 2/10

Pedigrees have been used to understand and manage diversity in threatened populations for decades. But, caveats like assumed founder relatedness, missing data, and errors can make them tricky to use. See Forsdick et al (ecoevorxiv.org/7bnjw/) for more. 3/10

Molecular data can address these caveats, and genomic data can provide similar estimates of relatedness to robust pedigrees, as explored in Galla et al. 2020 (bit.ly/2UuRizL). 4/10

But now that we can estimate relatedness with genomic data, some have asked whether pedigree data is worthwhile in the conservation genomics era. Here, we say YES. 5/10

In our paper (bit.ly/3wCO7DH), we describe how 🧬 data can reconstruct, complete, & validate pedigrees. Pedigrees can help with 🧬 study design & provide important life history, ecological & demographic context for quantitative genetic and genomic analyses. 6/10

Through perspectives from our practitioner & Indigenous coauthors conserving critically #endangered species in #Aotearoa NZ 🇳🇿, we contend that the act of building & sharing pedigrees can bridge gaps between researchers, practitioners, Indigenous Peoples & local communities. 7/10

Thanks to the team that contributed to this piece: @NamesAreHard89, Liz Brown, Yvette Couch-Lewis, Daryl Eason, @DrRebeccaMae, @jilla_hamilton, @JLEHeath, @SamanthaSHauser, Emily Latch, Marjorie Matocq, Anne Richardson, @birds_py, @HoggCarolyn, @ASanture, @testeeves. 8/10

We thank members of the Kākāpō, Kakī, and Kākāriki Karaka Recovery Programmes–incl the tribal representatives on the Recovery Groups for each of these taonga (treasured) species for their support. Thanks to @MBIEsci @docgovtnz @UCNZ #BrianMasonTrust #MohuaTrust for funding. 9/10

Ping @gbike_cost @docgovtnz @SCBOceania @SCBConGen @congenetics @BoiseState @UCNZ @UCNZbiology 10/10