Character study Illustrations by F. Curtis Lubbe from the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Belowground organs come in such a wide range of shapes and sizes — even among roots a…

New on the Belowground blog: Character study (plants are peaceful characters and this is what we need now...) plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2026/04/08/c...

Is loss of distyly always associated with high selfing rates? And what are the genomic consequences? Read more about this in our new preprint on repeated loss of distyly in Linum, led by @zopos.bsky.social and @panazerv.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

An angiosperm‐wide perspective on reproductive strategies and floral traits Flowering plants have many modes of sexual reproduction, notably varying from selfing to outcrossing, and from bisexual flowers to individuals with separate sexes (dioecy). These reproductive modes ...

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@yu1cheng.bsky.social, in collaboration with Filip Kolar and me, published an article looking at how the genetic architecture of unreduced gametes and environmental factors can affect autopolyploidy evolution.

Congrats Yu!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

*The overlooked link between different resource partitioning strategies and plant species richness in tropical alpine ecosystems* - our immense comparative work in the Andes and the eastern African mountains got published today! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Ploidy rather than hybridization dictates the mode of reproduction in three Central European Crataegus species. Recently published by our "Malinae team": academic.oup.com/aobpla/advan...

Historical introgression drives plant diversification in the Mediterranean Basin. Read our latest study on Picris: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Juan Manuel Gorospe from my team used genomic, phenotypic and ecological data to evalute species boundaries and the speciation continuum in Oritrophium s.s. (Asteraceae) from the tropical high Andes: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I'm happy to be part of our expert network of Brassicaceae researchers, building knowledge on taxonomy, systematics, morphology, phylogenomics and cytogenomics - presented in a new publication about BrassiBase and BrassiTEN:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Finally I'm back with research on Brassicaceae - on reproductive investment in relation to the environment - thanks to a very enjoyable collaboration led by @mjavad1991.bsky.social and @plantreproevo.bsky.social!

How many times have buzz pollinated flowers evolved? Read the latest version of our preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @draverbee.bsky.social @roszenil.bsky.social

Colours belowground Illustrations and photos by F. Curtis Lubbe from the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Although not always as showy as the plant parts aboveground, the belowground can also feat…

New on the Belowground blog: plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/c...

Frequent shifts in woodiness, growth form and habitat played a crucial role in the rapid diversification of high Andean Senecio. Luciana Salomón from my team led this fascinating study: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

“Association scans” are just the first step to understanding local adaptation A rare glamour shot of Arabidopsis thaliana flowers (Flickr, Steffen Geyer) Genotype-environment association is one of the most fundamental phenomena of landscape genomics. A species’ adaptat…

For the Molecular Ecologist, I wrote about a cool recent preprint that shows how complicated the connections really are between landscape genomic scans for locally adapted loci and actual locally adaptive function

Frailejones belonging to the species Espeletia incana in La Rusia Páramo complex. La Rusia complex is one of the radiation centers for the Espeletiinae tribe.

The role of leaf & root functional traits in the Espeletiinae (#Asteraceae) radiation

New #AJB research by Valeria Vargas-Martínez & Adriana Sanchez

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #botany #plantscience #ecology #paramo

Just extended the deadline to March 21 for this position in the Plant Phylogenomics group at the University of Vienna. It is sort of a "post doc plus" position funded for up to six years.

Please reach out if you want to chat - I'd love to talk to you about it!

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

A survey of triploid block inconsistency: potential mechanisms and evolutionary implications on polyploid speciation Abstract. The triploid block, primarily caused by endosperm developmental issues, is known as a significant barrier to interploidy hybridization among flow

A new paper led by Susnata Salony about triploid block variation, congratulations Susnata!

academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

The genetic architecture of polygenic adaptation under a network-derived trait The genetic architecture of adaptation varies across species, populations, and traits. While existing models capture aspects like the number of loci, effect sizes, and allele frequencies, they often o...

Thrilled to share new work from @stochasnick examining how gene regulatory networks influence quantitative trait evolution! His forward-time simulations reveal fascinating dynamics in the genetic architecture of adaptation. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

📢 Viewpoint in New Phyt. on polyploid establishment!
Key take-homes🧵
1. In contrast to earlier hypotheses that pollinators can help new polyploids establish, we suggest that pollinators mainly prevent polyploid establishment because outcrossing increases the strength of minority cytotype exclusion.

With an excellent panel of speakers, 200 participants and 70 poster abstracts submitted, we are in the final stage of our preparations and we are looking forward to welcoming all of you in Cologne!
colognespringmeeting.uni-koeln.de

Polyploidy & Arabidopsis! We found tetraploid-characteristic haplotypes to be made of novel ‘mosaics’ forged from multiple allelic sources in our new paper:
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Ecological speciation with gene flow followed initial large‐scale geographic speciation in the enigmatic afroalpine giant senecios (Dendrosenecio) Mountains have highly heterogeneous environments that generate ample opportunities for lineage differentiation through ecological adaptation, geographic isolation and secondary contact. The geograph...

Our collaborative research with the team of Christian Brochmann on ecological speciation of the giant senecios on Mt. Kenya just got published!
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....