Hyeon Jeong (HJ) Kim successfully defended her dissertation on August 13, 2021! With an increasing amount of wildlife poaching occurring throughout the world for use as meats and/or traditional medicine, understanding the genetic composition of threatened taxa has becoming increasingly important. HJ focused her research on the genomic variation found in eight species of pangolin, including the Sunda pangolin which is the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world. The rarity with which these animals are seen in the wild caused HJ to rely on natural history collections and scat samples to gather genomic data. The museum samples were up to 150 years old, which can and did create difficulty for gathering genomic data, but HJ pushed forward. She found that through time, all pangolin species have undergone a decrease in heterozygosity, which limits an animal’s ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. To generate even more data, she organized extensive fieldwork programs in Nepal and Viet Nam utilizing dogs to survey pangolins by searching for scat samples. The importance and ambition of HJ’s project has resulted in prestigious funding, outreach opportunities, and most recently a job as an Associate Program Officer in the Scientific Services Section of CITES. We can’t think of a better-fit person to continue the immense fight to protect Earth’s biodiversity.
