Seminar title: Leveraging community genomics for evolutionary inference and conservation applications | Abstract: Many of the world’s wildlife populations are declining at an alarming rate, precipitating an unprecedented biodiversity crisis. Reductions in population size will eventually lead to isolation and loss of genetic diversity, which can reinforce population decline through mutational meltdown and eventual extinction. An outstanding challenge of conservation genetics research is to implement metrics that reliably predict population health and the factors affecting population change. Research in my group leverages large population genomic datasets to ask fundamental questions in evolutionary biology and identify opportunities to apply emergent principles to conservation challenges. I will briefly introduce my lab’s work on Galápagos finches, emphasizing the opportunities offered by large community genomic datasets to study evolutionary processes. Next, I will discuss outcomes from a large regional conservation genomics project — representing 221 species across 74 orders of California wildlife and nearly 20,000 individuals — to evaluate the factors that affect “genomic health” at a regional scale. I will summarize which genomic indicators of population health may be useful for informing conservation action and directing management decisions for an entire community of California wildlife.