Mid-Michigan Spring Phenology Watch 2026 Day 2.

*2026

This and the following series follow the phenology of a wood lot. Trees go from have no leaves to full leaves as the spring progresses.

Mid-Michigan Spring Phenology Watch 2006 Day 1.

Blooming trout lily

My trout lilies finally bloomed in East Lansing.

White House lifts hold on NIH research spending Director Jay Bhattacharya tells House lawmakers that grantmaking, hiring are on track

This was almost a month ago. Has anyone received an NIH grant since then? www.science.org/content/arti...

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸

We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.

The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Dynamics of Expression Variability Contribute to Retention of Small-Scale vs. Whole-Genome Duplicates Abstract. Genome analyses reveal that gene duplication in eukaryotes is pervasive, providing a primary source for the emergence of new genes. Nevertheless,

@haorancai.bsky.social and Des Marais investigated gene expression variability in duplicate genes, suggesting a mechanism facilitating gene expression divergence, functional gains, and duplicate retention following small-scale duplications.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag077

#genome #evolution

Fig. 1 Primary pollinator functional groups in Silene: diurnal pollination (yellow frames), by (a) hummingbirds (Ruby-throated hummingbird on Silene regia); (b) butterflies (Papilio sp. on Silene subciliata

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/7) Silene, a versatile model system: from sex and genome evolution to ecology and speciation
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The American Naturalist classic cover

Murray et al. show that the fast-slow continuum of life history variation emerges as a contour of highest fitness in the face of catastrophic demographic disturbances, which rivals some classic hypotheses.

Read now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

A botanist searches for the seeds of the rare Death Valley Sage For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds.

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds. n.pr/4ttOsq4

Great to meet up with Rich Shefferson, who is now a Full Professor and a Department Head at the University of Tokyo. Rich and I overlapped in Ellen Simms’ lab at UC Berkeley, when I was and an undergraduate there. It’s been over two decades since we had a chance to meet up.

Despite the great extent of coastlines of the world (>million miles depending on how you measure it), very few scientists currently work on understanding how plants adapt to this important habitat. This week, I was able to meet with one of these few scientists, Matsuo Itoh, in Kyoto, Japan.

Gonna be some rad science -- @mollyschumer.bsky.social keynote and a bunch of good talks and posters. And I'll personally pay the registration of anyone who wants to come (it's free).

Being able to meet Dr. Itoh and his wife Yuka, in Kyoto this week was thus, really special. They were amazing hosts who showed us some great sites in the city, including some really special gardens.

Anyhow, as you can see, this subfield progresses slowly, and advances come only when scientists periodically pick up this century-long pursuit, with decades going by with little new research.

Turesson did not have a clear set of mechanisms to explain the phenomena he observed. It was Boyce in 1954 who postulated the key driving factor to be salt spray and he went so far to claim we should rename coastal ecotypes as "salt-spray ecotypes."

THE SPECIES AND THE VARIETY AS ECOLOGICAL UNITS Click on the article title to read more.

This work of course goes all the way back to Turesson, who in 1922 coined the term "ecotype" based on his observation that coastal populations of many plant species have the same set of locally adapted traits. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

So, it was truly inspirational to read the work of Dr. Itoh, whom none of us knew, on the same area of research. I could imagine him trying to think through the same challenges and the great realization of how the ocean lets forth an amazing mist that drives adaptation and the formation of ecotypes.

Contrasting environmental factors drive local adaptation at opposite ends of an environmental gradient in the yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus) Premise Identifying the environmental factors responsible for natural selection across different habitats is crucial for understanding the process of local adaptation in plants. Despite its importan...

This was a surprise to us, as we had been working on genetic variation in salt spray tolerance in monkeyflowers. bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Salt Spray Distribution and Its Impact on Vegetation Zonation on Coastal Dunes: a Review - Estuaries and Coasts Salt spray mainly originates from the bursting of bubbles in breaking waves and is often considered as one of the dominant factors contributing to vegetation zonation in coastal dunes. In this paper, ...

Salt spray had been recognized by ecologists as being very important for structuring plant communities along the ocean. However, Du and Hesp 2020, who reviewed this, claimed that there was no evidence for genetic variation for salt spray tolerance within species. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Salt Spray Community Click on the article title to read more.

Before reading his work, I felt very alone in my pursuit of trying to understand oceanic salt spray adaptations. The last major review on the subject had been written in 1954 by Stephen Boyce. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/...

I received a request to review the first of his papers during the depths of the pandemic. What I read greatly inspired me at a low point and convinced me to write my current NSF grant proposal to understand adaptations to oceanic salt spray in the yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus.

Dr. Itoh spent the last decade of his career studying a coastal ecotype of Setaria viridis that occurs in Japan (var. pachystachys). Through these studies, he demonstrated that the coastal ecotype is locally adapted to strong winds and oceanic salt spray. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Despite the great extent of coastlines of the world (>million miles depending on how you measure it), very few scientists currently work on understanding how plants adapt to this important habitat. This week, I was able to meet with one of these few scientists, Matsuo Itoh, in Kyoto, Japan.

There is nowhere else in the world (that I am aware of) where phenology has been recorded as regularly as in Kyoto, Japan. Records here of peak cherry blossom bloom go back to the year 812. Those blooms have been getting earlier in recent years due to climate change and urban heat island effects.

Short Kyoto phenology watch Day 5 (fin). #sakura

Short Kyoto phenology watch Day 4. #sakura

Short Kyoto phenology watch Day 3. #sakura

Review: What happens when it gets too hot – the vulnerability of plant reproduction in a warming world | Plantae Climate change brings about higher temperatures, threatening plant populations worldwide. Higher temperatures interfere with reproductive processes such as pollen production or fertilization…

Review: What happens when it gets too hot – the vulnerability of plant reproduction in a warming world plantae.org/review-what-...