Plant Conservation Practitioners Can Benefit from Neutral Genetic Diversity

Several papers deal with a conservation genetics gap in which plant conservation and restoration managers or practitioners do not soundly integrate population genetics information into conservation management. Authors concerned about this issue point out that practitioners perceive genetic research results to be impractical or unnecessary in the short term due to time and financial constraints. In addition, researchers often fail to translate research findings into comprehensive, jargon-free recommendations effectively. If possible, conservation-related or conservation-oriented articles should be easily written to bridge the research¿implementation gap. Finally, based on a previously published prioritization framework for conservation genetics scenarios, we introduce four simple genetic categories by exemplifying each case. We hope that conservation practitioners could employ these suggested guidelines for the prioritization of population- and species-level management.This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT of the Republic of Korea (NRF- 2020R1I1A3074635 to M.Y.C. and NRF-2017R1A2B4012215 to M.G.C.), and was partly carried out as part of the study on population characteristics and conservation management strategies of rare plants in the Korea National Arboretum (KNA1-2-37, 20-4), who supported M.G.C. in 2021. K.M. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. U20A2080, 31622015) while J.L.-P. is funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-119163GB-I00)Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Bridging the Gap between Conservation Geneticists and Conservation Practitioners: Some Examples 3. Expected Scenarios According to Levels of Neutral Genetic Parameters: A Simplified Proposal 4. A Prioritization Framework for Conservation Strategies Based on Neutral Genetic Diversity Scenarios 5. Conclusions Author Contributions Funding Acknowledgments Conflicts of Interest Reference