Starting in the Summer of 2025, a project to investigate the genomics of the flora for the Cayuga Basin of the Finger Lakes (NY).
During the summer of 2025, the interns of the LH Bailey Hortorium Herbarium (BH) collected plant samples from the region. Starting with the 2025 collecting season, samples were collected for herbarium vouchers but also in silica. The biodiversity of the Cayuga Basin flora utilizes those collections to start building a biodiversity genomics resource for the area. Each sample is associated with a physical herbarium voucher, with the generated sequencing data also being associated with that voucher.
The genome sequencing data will allow us to start building a community phylogenetics foundation to address questions such as evolutionary signal of habit, flowering time, nativity, and many other traits. This project is primarily led by Dylan Sheng, Hannah Marx, and Jacob Landis, with credit to all the interns that collected material.