{"id":802,"date":"2025-12-19T12:25:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T12:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/?p=802"},"modified":"2025-12-19T13:38:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:38:35","slug":"collaboration-born-at-the-xx-international-botanical-congress-leads-to-a-new-scientific-article-on-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-landscape-genetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/collaboration-born-at-the-xx-international-botanical-congress-leads-to-a-new-scientific-article-on-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-landscape-genetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaboration\u00a0born at the XX International Botanical Congress\u00a0leads to a\u00a0new\u00a0scientific\u00a0article on the\u00a0challenges and\u00a0opportunities of\u00a0landscape\u00a0genetics\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In July 2024, the <a href=\"https:\/\/ibcmadrid2024.com\/index.php\">XX International Botanical Congress<\/a> (IBC) took place in Madrid, where the head of the Pollination Ecology Workgroup, Tsipe Aavik, co-organised the symposium \u201cAcross Land and Water: Understanding Plant Gene Flow at a Landscape Scale\u201d. The symposium also featured a presentation by our landscape genetics researcher Iris Reinula. Discussions and presentations at the congress eventually grew into a recently published opinion article, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10980-025-02235-5\">Landscape genetics in plants: challenges and insights from the XX International Botanical Congress<\/a>\u201d in <em>Landscape Ecology<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The aim of the article was to identify the most current research trends and challenges in the field and to discuss how landscape genetics can be applied even more effectively in plant conservation. The authors emphasise that although landscape genetics offers remarkable opportunities for biodiversity monitoring and conservation, many aspects of the field remain insufficiently studied despite its rapid development. For instance, landscape genetic methods have so far been used very little to study bryophytes, meaning that our knowledge of their dispersal and gene flow is still highly fragmented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Across different plant groups, the scientists highlighted several methodological limitations. Firstly, the long life span of many plant species makes it difficult to understand to what extent genetic patterns reflect historical land use and climatic conditions, and how much present-day human activities shape gene flow between populations. Another aspect complicating plant research is related to their life-history traits. In addition to long life spans, genetic patterns are influenced by reproductive strategies, dependence on various dispersal vectors and interspecific variability in reproductive characteristics. However, the authors argue that these challenges should not hinder the advancement of landscape genetic research in plants, which has so far received less attention compared to landscape genetic studies in animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The article stresses that closer collaboration between scientists and stakeholders, increasing public awareness and the development of user-friendly tools are crucial for translating landscape genetic knowledge into effective conservation action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the University of Tartu pollination ecology team, landscape geneticists from Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany contributed to the symposium and the resulting article. This productive international collaboration is expected to continue, and landscape genetics will remain one of the key research directions of our workgroup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In July 2024, the XX International Botanical Congress (IBC) took place in Madrid, where the head of the Pollination Ecology [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pollination.ut.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}