Conservation genetics

Natural populations currently face a wide variety of threats including climate change, habitat loss, over-harvesting, invasive species and disease. The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that ecosystems have declined by approximately 50% relative to historical pristine conditions, and that approximately 25% of species are now threatened by extinction. This human-caused biodiversity crisis calls for using all available scientific tools to understand and reverse the increasing rate of extinction. While extinction is inherently a demographic process, being driven by changes in the population growth rate, the field of genetics plays an important role in the conservation of biodiversity. ‘Conservation genetics’ is a diverse field that applies genetic principles and methods to characterize and advance the preservation of biodiversity. Here, I first provide a short history of the development of the field and then list examples of the most important ways that genetics contributes to conservation. © 2021