This was the product of a decade of work, led by Jochen Wolf @jochenwolflab.bsky.social) and kick-started by @frodefossoy.bsky.social & Bård Stokke, made possible by field teams from dozens of countries! @rytikerttunen.bsky.social @biosulc.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social @gregowens.bsky.social

It really highlights to me how car-centric design makes everything so much worse for general living.

These homes were built in 1999, originally surrounded by forest. The globe and mail wrote a story about them 8 years later, once the rest of the neighbourhood filled in. vibrantvictoria.ca/forum/index....

Also thank you to the Kelp Rescue Initiative who were critical for sample collection and collaboration. They are doing amazing work applying some the genetic knowledge to real kelp restoration.

Also thank you to the many First Nations who contributed including Gitga'at, Gitxaała, Haida, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo-Xai'xais, Kitselas, Kitsumkalum, K'ómoks, Mamalilikulla, Metlakatla, Tlowitsis, and Wei Wai Kum.

Many thanks to the team including @cneufeld.bsky.social, @brookeweigel.bsky.social, @samstarko.bsky.social and many others who aren't on bluesky or who I don't know their handle. This work was spearheaded through many challenges (including awful kelp DNA) by Jordan Bemmels.

One interesting pattern did emerge that the amount of inbreeding load (i.e. selfed vs outbred) varies between populations and this is related to Ne. Small populations have already achieved near their max load so selfing doesn’t increase it.

Does the small populations and selfing help purge deleterious alleles? We looked for sites conserved across brown algae, that did vary in our populations to measure genetic load and found that total load did not vary between small and big populations.

We found geographic population structure with fairly strong IBD. Interestingly, selfing was common and about 10% of the adult kelp were selfed in both species. Some populations, particularly those in Puget Sound, had really small Ne and diversity.