ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

In recent decades, priorities for landscape-scale conservation management has focused on more easily measurable metrics such as species richness, or presence of individual threatened species. However, in recent years there has been an increased understanding of the importance of understanding genetic diversity in the conservation of individual species, and at the landscape scale. I will review some of the global movements towards including genetic diversity as a key metric in understanding biodiversity loss, and our current understanding of the loss of genetic diversity globally. I will then discuss the challenges in estimating comparable levels of diversity across taxa, and how we can use these towards using macrogenetic approaches to make regional conservation decisions. As examples, I will show our in-progress work towards supporting landscape-scale management of landscapes, using the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires as an example.

Dr Renee Catullo | ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ of Western Australia

Renee Catullo is a Lecturer at the ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ of Western Australia in Perth. While at heart a frog biologist, her more recent work specialises in evolutionary and conservation genetics, with a focus on amphibians. She led an extensive project on the conservation genetics of fauna species impacted by the 2019-20 bushfires, commissioned by the Commonwealth government. Renee works directly with conservation agencies to help ensure management of threatened species helps them persist in the long-term. More recently, she has been working on how to incorporate information on genetic diversity across taxa to support regional conservation actions.

Please visit here for more information on The Centre of Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS).