Ezra Kottler Awarded Smith Conservation Fellowship

Congrats, Ezra!

Ezra Kottler (they/them) was selected as one of five participants in the Smith Conservation Fellowship for 2022.

Ezra will test the efficacy of sourcing methods through time and across space to introduce climate-resilient genomic diversity into restoration populations. This investigation will be conducted with Lasthenia conjugens and L. burkei, two endangered asters that are endemic to California vernal pool wetlands, a highly threatened habitat that was once widespread throughout western North America.

Vernal pools exhibit high, and increasing, year-to-year variation due to fluctuating precipitation patterns and represent a habitat in which seed banks may be particularly critical to the evolutionary potential and long-term success of restored populations. Ezra will combine transplant experiments under different hydrologic conditions in the field and greenhouse with next generation sequencing to characterize the distribution of both neutral and adaptive genomic variation among populations and across generations. This project will provide concrete recommendations for conserving rare and specialized plant taxa while serving as a case study for restoration sourcing methodologies. In collaboration with restoration practitioners, they will build a “Seed Sourcing Network” to develop and implement evolutionary tools for restoration and to disseminate research results and recommendations.