Exploring and validating statistical reliability in forensic conservation genetics

Safeguarding biological diversity from evolutionary lineages to ecosystems is a major undertaking for humanity. Forensic conservation genetics for the protection of wild flora and fauna aims to provide statistical inference tools and services for the enforcement of local to global conservation and management strategies. This paper reviews statistical criteria that provide insight into and assess the reliability of conclusions drawn from statistical inference. The translation of these fundamental criteria into practice is illustrated with applications from evolutionary and forensic genetics, specifically focusing on the inference of geographic origin using population assignment approaches. [...]