Multinational evaluation of genetic diversity indicators for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Under the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 196 Parties committed to report the status of genetic diversity for all species. To facilitate reporting, three genetic diversity indicators were developed, two of which focus on processes contributing to genetic diversity conservation: maintaining genetically distinct populations and ensuring populations are large enough to maintain genetic diversity. The major advantage of these indicators is that they can be estimated with or without DNA-based data. However, demonstrating their feasibility requires addressing the methodological challenges of using data gathered from diverse sources, across diverse taxonomic groups, and for countries of varying socioeconomic status and biodiversity levels. Here, we assess the genetic indicators for 919 taxa, representing 5,271 populations across nine countries, including megadiverse countries and developing economies. Eighty-three percent of taxa assessed had data available to calculate at least one indicator. Our results show that although the majority of species maintain most populations, 58% of species have populations too small to maintain genetic diversity. Moreover, genetic indicator values suggest that IUCN Red List status and other initiatives fail to assess genetic status, highlighting the critical importance of genetic indicators.

Methods
Data comes from the first multi-country assessment of genetic diversity status, with emphasis on the PM and Ne 500 indicators, including nine countries: Australia, Belgium, Colombia, France, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States of America. Within each country, teams of researchers and conservation practitioners from academia, government institutions, and non-governmental organizations aimed to asses of 50-100 species per country. In total 919 taxa, representing 5,271 populations were assessed. Data comes from different sources depending on the country and the species.

Data was collected using a KoboToolBox (https://www.kobotoolbox.org/) form specifically designed for this project. The resulting dataset was downloaded as a .csv file and processed in R version 4.2.1 using custom functions and a processing pipeline specifically developed for this study for quality checking, indicator calculation, and subsequent analyses. The R code is available from  https://github.com/AliciaMstt/GeneticIndicators or a static version at Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/10620307

Japan's raw data comes from the ancillary data for national red-list evaluation basically based on a field survey provided by the Japanese Society for Plant Systematics. Raw data was provided on the condition that no information that could lead to the species' location in the field would be published, as a way to protect the endangered species. Therefore, for this repository part of the Japan data was obscured or removed, as explained for each variable in the data dictionary.