Sarah W. Fitzpatrick

Fitness benefits of genetic rescue despite chromosomal differences in an endangered pocket mouse Two-thirds of Earth’s species have undergone population declines, leaving many vulnerable to genomic erosion and inbreeding depression. Genetic rescue can boost the fitness of small populations, but p...

Excited to share our new paper on genetic rescue in the Pacific pocket mouse! To conserve this endangered species, we sought to understand whether small populations at risk of outbreeding depression are better managed in isolation or with gene flow. @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Super proud of @meaghansaurus.bsky.social and all the effort this study represents in the field (led by Eric Hileman & Jen Moore!) and in the lab. Worrisome story for the snakes, but important to know, learn from & act on.

This was definitely a labor of love … SO MANY hours of effort (just ask my husband!), but so worth it in the end. It was pure delight to work with the brilliant Silu Wang on this project.

And all papers are open access! www.pnas.org/topic/574

Thanks Dan - the fieldwork is absolutely the backbone making any of this possible.

We are thrilled for this to be included in the @pnas.org Special Feature: Monitoring & Restoring Gene Flow in the Increasingly Fragmented Ecosystems of the Anthropocene www.pnas.org/topic/574

Wonderful to work with editors @siluwang.bsky.social and Anne Yoder and all contributors to this feature

Really meaningful collaboration among @msunatsci.bsky.social, Archbold Biological Station, and agency partners USFWS, DoD. Shout out to the late Reed Bowman who launched this translocation and monitoring effort in the 90s and was an early visionary and champion for translocations and genetic rescue

Excited to share our new paper led by @alexlewanski.bsky.social showing largely positive, multi-decadal consequences of translocations in Red-cockaded woodpeckers at Avon Park Air Force Range in central Florida: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

press release: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Huge thanks and congrats to @siluwang.bsky.social and Anne Yoder for organising this amazing special issue. It has been fun contributing and interacting with Silu, Anne and the authors of the other manuscripts, including in a Zoom "tea break" where we presented our projects to each other.

Thanks Ellie!

Translocations spur population growth but fail to prevent genetic erosion in imperiled Florida Scrub-Jays Linderoth et al. find that translocations of Florida Scrub-Jays aid the recovery of the species by catalyzing population growth but that reproductive skew dampens accompanying genetic benefits, ultima...

Study led by Tyler Linderoth and wouldn't have been possible without the vision and heroic field efforts of Lauren Deaner (cover photo credit!) and Raoul Boughton nor the genomic resources developed by Nancy Chen and her lab.

Link to paper: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Delayed post, but we are excited to share this study on decades of monitoring of translocations launched by the late Reed Bowman. We show a demographic boost (i.e., rescue!), but success was largely driven by a few individuals leading to erosion of genetic diversity.
www.kbs.msu.edu/2025/05/scru...

If you are a person who cares about the future of science in the US, please take actions this week to #SaveNSF. @asn-amnat.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social are leading a week of action - here is a Media Support Tool from the societies docs.google.com/document/d/1... 🧪🧑‍🔬🧬🖥️🦑

Adaptation and gene flow are insufficient to rescue a montane plant under climate change Climate change increasingly drives local population dynamics, shifts geographic distributions, and threatens persistence. Gene flow and rapid adaptation could rescue declining populations yet are seld...

Brilliant new paper by Jill Anderson and colleagues using 9 years of transplant experiments and integral projection models to predict the capacity of populations for adaptation and persistence under new climates in Boechera stricta. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...