me too!

"While there is no current consensus, we do not advocate for a single definition and contend that a lack of unanimity is not inherently problematic."

Hive mind request.

I’m looking for long term insect (ideally pollinator) monitoring schemes that have conducted weekly/monthly transects/counts for several years. I know of the Bee walks, UKMS, and PoMs in the UK.

I would love some non-UK examples!

🐝🦋🐝🦋🐝🦋

We're hiring an Assistant Professor of Ecology! Come and join me and a great group of colleagues at University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Our job ad: efhc.fa.ca2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Message me if you have questions. @ibiouwindsor.bsky.social @uwindsor.bsky.social

Really cool. PIVOT!!

Poster for the lecture. Photo of the speaker, UNB logo, and talk title.

For folks in Fredericton: public lecture TONIGHT at 7 p.m. (Head Hall C13, UNB campus) by Dr. Dolph Schluter, "On the Origin of Modern Species". An accessible talk to answer one of the big questions about our world: where do species come from?

More detailed info: www.unb.ca/frederict...
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New publication @thermal-biology.bsky.social!
We show that non-invasive thermal cameras can measure thoracic temperatures in wild bees in the field. New tool to ID potential heat stress under #climatechange.
Congrats to undergrad Mei McFeely on publishing her thesis #microclimate #pollinators 🐝🎉🌻

a cat with a sad look on its face is laying down on a yellow blanket ALT: a cat with a sad look on its face is laying down on a yellow blanket

I just said no to an opportunity because it would mean travel to the USA and I'm very sad. I also recognize my privilege in being able to do so (tenured, etc) but I'm just so sad about.... gestures widely

Image of a bearded, bald, and morose Charles Darwin, with his famous quote “I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything”

Happy birthday, Chuck.

Proud to carry on your legacy of studying evolutionary biology while going through it

Sample of Ilja Van Braeckel's Darwin handwriting font.

In 2018, Ilja Van Braeckel created a font based on Charles Darwin's handwriting for #DarwinDay. It was based on 12,000 pictures of Darwin's original manuscripts!

Link rot happened, and the original files are missing. I have put it up again here: drive.google.com/file/d/14Kcn...

Happy Darwin Day!

A four panel comic. In panel 1, there are three beautiful blooming roses, and the text says "Roses are red..." In panel 2, there are some lovely violets budding and blooming, and the text says "Violets are blue..." In panel 3, there are some terrifying red and flesh colored plants with toothy maws and the text says "Hydnora are leafless, bizarrely fleshy, and incapable of producing chlorophyl..." and in panel 4 there are some cute hearts and the text says "And so are you. Happy Valentine's Day"

Botany valentine. Another oldie.

I'd love to switch but tough when the university buys into these platforms!

As someone who has spent a career measuring flowers, I'm curious to see how they compare to these protocols

In the January 2026 @ijpsjournal.bsky.social

Spatiotemporal variation in selection on floral traits related to abortion rate, predispersal seed predation, and fitness variance

@evoecoamy.bsky.social, Monica A Geber

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

#PlantScience

Looking for something new to integrate into an #evolution or #microbiology course? Useful for lectures, labs, homework?

Have a look at our STEPS program, which simulates bacterial evolution, including the #LTEE. Easy web-based interface & lab manual w/ exercises to help develop students' intuition.

A bright red, tubular flower of Mimulus cardinalis, viewed in profile; photo by Curtis Clark via Wikimedia Commons

A resurrection study of scarlet monkeyflower populations across the species' range finds relatively little adaptive response to a seven-year drought event, showing that evolutionary rescue is not as predictable as we might hope 🌿

buff.ly/L8o4hhr

If you've read all this, I hope it shows that science often doesn't proceed in a direct line and that sometimes persistence is worth it!

The data is freely available so it can hopefully be used for something unexpected in the future too. doi.org/10.5061/drya...

I have a kid that is starting to learn to drive that wasn't around when this all began. I've moved from USA to Sweden to Canada. I got tenure. We got through COVID restrictions and the research disruptions they brought. I'm so proud of this paper and so grateful to Monica for everything!

And then we wrote the paper and published it, right? In a perfect world maybe yes, but my world isn't perfect...this paper brought to you by stubbornness, luck of staying in academia, and a sabbatical to write!

I was shocked to see a pattern! Really! I couldn't believe there was something there and something that made some ecological sense.

These papers gave a framework to analyze spatiotemporal variation and a reason to test for ecological relationships. I wasn't expecting anything but I figured what's the worse that could happen? Another null result? I'd been down that road with these data before.

Using ecological context to interpret spatiotemporal variation in natural selection Spatiotemporal variation in natural selection is expected, but difficult to estimate. Pollinator-mediated selection on floral traits provides a good system for understanding and linking variation in ...

This paper was also an inspiration onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... At first I regretted not counting those stigmas I collected for pollen grains and other forms of the ecology of the populations. But we did have seed predation and abortion rates.

a blue and white penguin with a yellow beak is waving ALT: a blue and white penguin with a yellow beak is waving

We didn't have pollinator-mediated selection but Monica is a very smart collaborator so I took her advice and thought about it.

Turns out I was waiting for @oysteinopedal.bsky.social to publish this paper: pollinationecology.org/index.php/jp... Monica suggested that we might be able to frame our paper with some of these ideas

What if I had chosen the wrong traits? Maybe I needed more statistical power...I should have observed more interactions...but I kept thinking it should be published at the very least since we had multiple populations over multiple years of data.

This brings me to the challenges of writing papers with essentially a null or negative result. It wasn't just that it is tough to convince others but it can also be hard to convince yourself. I did work on the data over the years and write a few drafts but it never quite got there.

I was sure we'd finally be able to see some differences in selection that could be attributed to a cause. But no! Flowers were starting much earlier but selection on the traits was really just similarly variable. Another interesting and important story I thought but difficult to write

a man wearing sunglasses and a suit is holding a fist in front of a microphone and saying early spring . ALT: a man wearing sunglasses and a suit is holding a fist in front of a microphone and saying early spring .

Rosie's first field season was an interesting one. 2012 we had to go to Ithaca early because the spring was so advanced. And though it was not planned I thought we had to measure selection again in the same populations!

Picture of Rosie Burdon with a champagne class in front of a window

When I hired a PhD student I decided that they were going to help continue the work in Penstemon digitalis but focused on the floral scent work. Rosie Burdon did some great work for her PhD (go check it out) figuring out some really interesting things about scent