The NACW is a central event for sharing Indigenous knowledge, science and lessons learned, reporting on caribou status and discussing approaches to address key challenges to caribou conservation, management and recovery. For the very first time this year, the 19th North American Caribou Workshop (NACW) and 16th Arctic Ungulate Conference are combined and held together in Anchorage, Alaska.
For this special occasion, EcoGenomics organized a Symposium with the title: A Framework for Monitoring Genetic Composition and Diversity in Rangifer.
The aim of this session is to facilitate a discussion among those involved in caribou genetic research. Large genetic/genomic datasets have been generated for Rangifer over the last decade, and this session will help advance the development of a comprehensive framework to measure genetic diversity for Rangifer, support the integration of genetic data/results in management and monitoring, assess threats across the range and inform planning activities and policies. The presenters will share their experience with different genetic data used in the assessment of genetic diversity, the suite and complementarity of diversity metrics, the availability of analytical pipelines and data management framework. We will also explore linkages between genetic diversity in caribou and Indigenous expert knowledge.
Within this Symposium EcoGenomics Co-lead Dr. Micheline Manseau and Researcher Dr. Rebecca Taylor and Dr. Daria Martchenko will present their recent findings. One of the EcoGenomics PhD students, Brandon Merriell will also present some of his findings in the session Population Estimation & Monitoring.
List of talks:
Dr. Micheline Manseau
Title: The adoption of genetic measures in conservation: An assessment of different methods of analysis to report on trend, connectivity and diversity using a national boreal woodland caribou dataset.
Dr. Rebecca Taylor
Title: Intra-specific diversity in caribou: A status assessment and monitoring approach using whole genome analysis.
Dr. Daria Martchenko
Title: Resolving the historical population demography of caribou with genomic data.
Brandon Merriell
Title: Evaluating the efficacy of close-kin mark-recapture for estimating caribou abundance
