La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science

News

The La Kretz Center’s 2022 Annual Report

Check out the innovative conservation research projects, stimulating public outreach events, and exciting funding programs that the center has supported over the past year!

Brad Shaffer & Rachel Blakey quoted in Pepperdine Graphic: Funding Biodiversity Research Provides More Understanding Amid Climate Change Effects

“If you buy into the notion that having biodiversity around you is good for people, then we have to understand enough of the ecology and the biology of the relevant biodiversity in the area to be able to keep it with us,” said H. Bradley Shaffer, distinguished professor in UCLA’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department and professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

The CCGP in the UCLA Daily Bruin: UCLA La Kretz Center researchers take lead in genetics study of California’s native species

UCLA researchers are taking the lead in the California Conservation Genomics Project, a state-funded project led by academic researchers aiming to gather genetic information on species native to California. The project is a collaborative effort between scientists affiliated with all 10 UC campuses, as well as members of many agencies. The researchers are working together to gather and record the genomic data of over 150 different species.

Brad Shaffer: LA Times: Geneticists are advancing the cause of conservation with a new breed of sanctuary

“My goal is to map glaring hot spots of genetic diversity,” said Brad Shaffer, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA who has devoted more than a decade to the cause of conserving assemblages of life forms with the greatest likelihood of adapting to future climate conditions. Now, as director of UCLA’s La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, he leads a team of 114 researchers drawn from all 10 University of California campuses that is creating the most comprehensive genomic dataset of native species ever assembled for conservation science.

CCGP Special Issue published by Journal of Heredity

The California Conservation Genomics Project (CCGP) is a unique, critically important step forward in the use of comprehensive landscape genetic data to modernize natural resource management at a regional scale. This dedicated issue of the JOH contains 17 CCGP papers, including the Editor's Choice lead article by La Kretz Center Director Brad Shaffer and the CCGP Executive Committee describing the project inception, goals, and deliverables.

La Kretz postdoc Zac MacDonald makes cover of Evolutionary Applications

The article authored by La Kretz postdoc Zac MacDonald concludes that ecologically mediated selection is contributing to variation within forest tent caterpillars (M. disstria), and that divergent adaptation related to both environmental conditions and host association should be considered in ongoing research and management of this important forest pest.