A series of workshops are presented as part of an IMLS-grant funded project, “Growing Metacollections and Strengthening Gardens for a Conservation Consortia Future,” and are led by contributing member institutions including the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the Morton Arboretum, Montgomery Botanical Center, & Botanic Gardens Conservation International-US (BGCI-US).

Designed for botanic gardens and arboreta already managing or considering managing a living conservation collection, the workshops will train participants on conducting ex situ gap analyses, a critical step in creating and managing conservation collections that contribute to a larger metacollection, especially for rare and imperiled species.

The workshop series includes:

• May 2024 - Virtual Ex Situ Gap Analysis Workshop

• March 2025 - In person Workshop at Atlanta Botanical Garden

• February 2027 - In person Workshop at The Huntington

The Global Conservation Consortia (GCC)

• About the GCC

• Join as a GCC Affiliate

• Preventing species extinctions: A global conservation consortium for Erica

Conservation Metacollections

• Overview of metacollections and the GCC

• Toward the Metacollection: Coordinating conservation collections to safeguard plant diversity (Griffith et al., 2019)

• Guidelines for establishing an oak metacollection site

Ex Situ Gap Analysis

• Crop wild relatives of the United States require urgent conservation action (Khoury et al., 2020)

• Examples of ex situ gap analyses

  • Global Magnolia Species Ex Situ Gap Analysis (Linsky et al., 2022)

  • Conservation Gap Analysis of Native US Oak (Beckman et al., 2019)

Data Sources for Gap Analysis

• BGCI PlantSearch Database

• BGCI PlantShare

Genetics and Metacollections

• New guidance for ex situ gene conservation: Sampling realistic population systems and accounting for collection attrition (Hoban, 2019)

• Taxonomic similarity does not predict necessary sample size for ex situ conservation: a comparison among five genera (Hoban et al., 2020)

• Proportional sampling strategy often captures more genetic diversity when population sies vary (Rosenberger et al., 2021)