Conservation in the Age of Genomics Webinar
/
We are delighted to invite you to our AGRF Live & On Demand Webinar Series which will run throughout 2021.
Dr Carolyn Hogg from the University of Sydney will be our first speaker, presenting a talk titled Conservation in the Age of Genomics about her vital bilby and woylie conservation research, and our AGRF-UQ PacBio Platform Manager David Hawkes will chair the event.
AGRF was the first organisation in Australia to receive a PacBio Sequel II system and Dr Hogg’s samples were processed in our very first Sequel II run. In addition to this important milestone, Dr Hogg has some fascinating stories that have underpinned her research, which she’ll also be sharing during the event.
Abstract:
The 21st century has given rise to the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the fusion of digital, biological and physical worlds and our growing use of technology. At the same time the world is immersed in a biodiversity crisis with over 1 million species now under threat of extinction. Of the 13,500 animal species listed as threatened by the IUCN, less than 1% have genomic resources.
To combat this, global genome initiatives have been established to create genomic resources for all eukaryotic life on earth. Yet a reference genome does not conserve a species. Having the reference genome allows us to develop a suite of tools to understand both genome-wide and functional diversity within and between species. Conservation practitioners can then use these genetic resources to inform their decision-making. Currently, a gap in our applied knowledge exists between when genomes are produced, and the information is used by conservation practitioners.
In May 2020, we launched the Threatened Species Initiative. Bringing together genome biologists and academia with conservation managers across Australia. Our objective is to not only to create a foundation of genomic data to advance our understanding of key Australian threatened species, but to ultimately empower conservation practitioners to leverage genomic information to tackle critical biological and conservation. Developed in direct consultation with government threatened species managers and other conservation practitioners, we will present our framework for meeting their needs and our systematic approach to integrating genomics into species recovery.
Biography
I have been working on the conservation of threatened species for over twenty-five years both in Australia and overseas. I am currently the Senior Research Manager for the Australasian Wildlife Genomics Group in the Faculty of Science. I have been working with the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program for the past ten years; in addition to other species such as orange-bellied parrots, koalas, bilbies and woylies. Working closely with both my academic and conservation management partners my vision is to create a conservation legacy for Australia by changing the way we integrate science, management and policy; to proactively promote species’ resilience in the face of a changing world. We are achieving this by developing better tools and technologies to integrate molecular genetics into real-time conservation management decisions.
