Pedigrees are a bridge between researchers, practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities
Pedigrees are a useful tool for understanding genetics and informing management efforts for threatened species. Beyond these uses, we contend that pedigrees help bridge the gap between conservation research and practice (i.e., the ‘research-implementation gap’ or the ‘conservation genomics gap’; Knight et al., 2008; Shafer et al., 2015). Funding for documenting and maintaining pedigree data requires close collaboration between natural resource agencies that often invest in long-term monitoring and research institutions that often invest in short-term projects that might complement the long-term monitoring investments. Collating and refining pedigree data is a time consuming task that often requires great communication between practitioners who collect long term demographic data sets and researchers who help validate pedigrees and perform downstream analyses. Indeed, the act of building a pedigree requires mutual knowledge of species life history, genealogy, and the genetic data used for validation. This co-development of pedigree resources builds trust, which can translate into improved application of genetic and genomic research into the conservation management of threatened species (Box 1).
In illustrating connections that link the present to the past, pedigrees are well-aligned with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews (Hudson, Ahuriri-Driscoll, Lea & Lea, 2007; Collier-Robinson et al., 2019; Hudson et al., 2020). Given this alignment, pedigrees can provide a centerpoint for discussions with Indigenous decision makers regarding conservation genetics research of culturally significant species (Box 2). Further, in our experience working with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) to enhance the recovery of threatened taonga (treasured) species in Aotearoa New Zealand, discussing familial ties between individuals provides opportunities for all parties to share diverse knowledge regarding these individuals as well as the environments around them. Given this, we encourage researchers to consider the use of pedigrees to help build mutually beneficial relationships with IPLC.
We have also found that pedigrees provide a helpful visual to communicate fundamental conservation genetics concepts like relatedness, inbreeding, and heritability without the jargon to non-scientific audiences, in large part because pedigrees are relatable. Indeed, our collective co-authorship has had experience using pedigrees–generally presented as family trees–as highly effective tools for engaging with school groups, university classrooms, retirees, policy makers, and politicians regarding conservation genetic management of threatened species. Effective science communication enhances conservation outcomes (see Holderegger et al., 2019), and we are confident that pedigrees will remain an important tool for science communicators for years to come.