Research at the Lavretsky Lab is interdisciplinary and working at the intersection of basic and applied research. Our program centers around datasets that simultaneously help answer outstanding questions within evolutionary biology, while providing data required for more immediate species management. To do so, we generate population and/or landscape-level partial and full genome datasets that are integrated with ecological and/or morphological data for comprehensive studies of population connectivity and viability of game and non-game species. Generally, we attempt to determine the distribution of genetic diversity across species’ ranges to understand (1) the extent to which adaptive and non-adaptive genetic diversity shapes population structure, including (2) what genes are responsible for geographic adaptation versus alternative selective pressures (e.g., sexual selection), (3) how contemporary pressures influence a species’ adaptive landscape, and (4) reuniting genotype with phenotype in an attempt to classify between parental and hybrid classes. Importantly, the Lavretsky Lab has partnered with NGOs Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation to build some of the first hunter-citizen-science data collection efforts noted as duckDNA and wildturkeyDNA, respectively!