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Societal Impact Statement Tropical dry forests (TDF) underpin the wellbeing of millions, mostly rural populations; yet have suffered from severe clearing in Colombia, triggering cascading effects such as desertification. By engaging scientists, society, and institutions in the establishment of platforms for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, crucial knowledge gaps will be bridged, helping to find a path toward sustainable development. Science‐led but socially and economically anchored information on biodiversity will help to incorporate nature's contributions to people into the society's cultural values. Ultimately, these transformative actions will translate into the comprehensive management of TDF through a greater impact in decision making. Summary Thousands of permanent plots have been established across the tropics with the purpose of monitoring tree communities. Research outcomes from these platforms, however, have been mainly directed toward the academic community, and their contribution to society has been limited so far. Here, we show how generating robust data on biodiversity has supported decision making in Colombian tropical dry forests (TDF), where less than 8% of their original cover remains. As a first step to build a national dialogue around the critical status of this ecosystem, a national collaborative network on TDF research and monitoring was born in 2014, the Red de Investigación y Monitoreo del Bosque Seco Tropical en Colombia (Red BST‐Col). Our main goal is to generate scientifically sound information that feeds into the comprehensive management of this ecosystem. To do so, a set of biodiversity monitoring platforms has been established across the country, which have already served to answer socio‐ecological questions related with deforestation drivers, citizen science, or the valuation of ecosystem services. Overall, this research agenda has nurtured the four lines that underpin the Program for the comprehensive management of dry forests in Colombia (knowledge management, preservation, restoration, and sustainable use), formulated by the Humboldt Institute, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Ministry of Environment in 2019. Many challenges are ahead, however, for a complex territory where multiple social actors and productive sectors coexist. The ultimate goal is to integrate all the dimensions of biodiversity to achieve a synthetic understanding of the functioning of the most endangered ecosystem in Colombia, and its relationship with local communities' wellbeing.

Potato yellow vein virus (PYVV) is the causal agent of the potato yellow vein disease and can reduce potato production up to 50%. This virus also infects tomatoes and can remain asymptomatic in plants. PYVV transmission is mediated by vegetative seed, the vector Trialeurodes vaporariorum, and grafts. Its genome has the P26 and P10 genes that are orthologues in the Crinivirus genus, which have been characterized as pathogenic factors and have not been studied in PYVV. We analyzed the variability of P26 and P10 from 45 and 48 sequences, which were obtained by RT-PCR amplification of the total RNA of symptomatic potato leaves from the provinces of Nariño, Cundinamarca, and Boyaca (Colombia). We included sequences of each gene of the PYVV genome of potato and tomato isolates from GenBank. The variability in these genes is influenced by the flow and uncontrolled use of vegetative seed between different provinces, that favor the dispersion of viral variants. In addition, the variability analysis based on maximum likelihood trees, haplotypes, and diversity indices showed that P26 is more variable than P10 and both are more variable in Andigena than in Phureja potatoes. The Tajima and Fu and Li tests revealedthat these genes are subject to negative selection.