Mood

It’s hard to see this and not feel deflated

Incalculable harm has already been caused. We have seen that even with an approved budget, our enemies do everything they can kill science.

And yes, they are our enemies. This is a war. We should start acting like it.

Our enemies have been for years.

Strongly recommend! Study plants and have a topic you love? An opportunity to dig and think deeply on a topic, with no restraints on length, and provide your perspective on its past, present, and future. And get paid! Writing this review on traits & herbaria in 2022 was super rewarding.

Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the ...

“They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science…And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees”

GBE Virtual Collection on Conservation Genomics Photo credit: Chuya Shinzato

Genome Biology and Evolution launches a new virtual collection on "Conservation Genomics"

Read our accompanying Highlight: "Genome Science at the Forefront of Biodiversity's Greatest Challenges"
🔗 buff.ly/qBGcsG7

Access the new virtual collection
🔗 buff.ly/VxXZUKv

#genome #evolution #congen

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

I can’t even get a response from PO’s. Not sure if the program I want to submit to even exists 🙃

We just published a review 🗞️😁:

‘The ecology of adaptive radiation’ revisited: A 25-year reflection

Dolph Schluter’s book inspired the interest in adaptive radiation, and we wanted to revisit it.

academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

1/5 🧵

Hi from Brazil!
@pedropezzi.bsky.social
We’re collecting the northern range of the Agalinis distribution here. Happy fieldwork Spring Break :)

That people fail to understand this is baffling to me

Botany 2026 conference graphic. Text reads: "Biodiversity at the Boundaries — Botany 2026, August 1-5, Tucson, Arizona. Registration Now Open! Early-Registration Deadline April 30, 2026. Abstract Deadline April 13." Features an illustrated desert landscape with cacti and the logos of six sponsoring societies including the Botanical Society of America. Website: www.botanyconference.org.

Registration is OPEN for #Botany2026 – Biodiversity at the Boundaries, August 1-5 in Tucson, AZ!

– Early-Registration Deadline: Apr 30
– Abstract Deadline: Apr 13
– BSA Travel Awards Deadline: Mar 15
– BSA Sectional Student Travel Awards Deadline: Apr 1

www.botanyconference.org
www.botany.org

I agree that established researchers can help by submitting to society journals instead. They are also making decisions about tenure and so buy-in from them would be critical either way.

I would also question whether ECRs actually need to publish in e.g. Nature, or if they just think they do

Not surprising!!

2 - Gold Open Access - same publishing process as above. The difference is that when an article is accepted for publication, the author/s or funder/s pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). The final version of the published article is then free to read for everyone. The APC to publish Gold Open Access in Nature is £9390.00/$12850.00/€10850.00.

Why are we still spending tens of thousands of $$$ on APC for non-society journals like Nature?

Wouldn’t that money be better spent at society journals at least? We are doing ourselves a disservice by continuing to participate in this madness.

You don’t need a paper in these journals to succeed.

Such an awesome program supporting undergrad engagement at the annual Botany conference. And I’m so glad BSA figured out how to keep it alive. It’s not too late to apply for #Botany2026 in Tucson (1-5 Aug)!!

#plantpeopleFT

Just now seeing this!

Lindsay @lindzeamays.bsky.social is wonderful to work with and is an amazing artist. I couldn’t have been happier with the result!!

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!

My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.

We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.

#Postdoc #EcoEvo

Pls RT!

Shared from my PhD lab’s WhasApp chat, how a journal published a paper about the Arctic fox which is 100% an AI hallucination, and journal isn’t retracting it.

www.canids.org/resources/Le...

Damn depressing how fake science and AI is increasingly flooding real science and real work.

Recently we're working with SNPs from whole genome assemblies to estimate ARGs. It's a pain to go from alignment files to vcf, keeping track of masked and invariant sites. So we wrote a snakemake/SLURM pipeline. Hope it's useful to others, and don't hesitate to post issues if there are problems!

Phylogeny and biogeographic distribution of Delphinium sect. Diedropetala.

Geography and admixture shape the genome‐scale phylogeny of North American #Delphinium

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
by Meek et al.

Photo credit: Delphinium scaposum & Delphinium carolinianum www.wildflower.org/texas; Delphinium viridescens www.burkeherbarium.org

Researchers in the US might be having feelings about writing grants atm-I know I am!

We still need to write them. In this Evolution Exchange, I again chat with Sam Scheiner, who summarizes how to write a competitive proposal.

His advice is gold, and helpful regardless of funder. Pls RT!

Glad to know I’m not the only one

Exciting announcement! My new department is launching a postdoc fellowship in quantitative biology. Fellows will be co-advised by two Bio faculty, one that is quant focused (not me) and one that is not (me???). I would love to co-sponsor a postdoc and build a collaboration so please reach out!

The first two articles of Volume 5 of the Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists are now published at ssbbulletin.org.

Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains underexplored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance chang...

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cool, thanks!

I like this approach too, except when my figure has a large number of elements (like a manhattan plot) which causes pdf storing the vector graphics to struggle. Do you know if magick struggles with conversion in this case?

It’s definitely a bird

Great! Excited to see your updated poster.

Congrats! And nice Penstemon! Is there a digital version of this you could share? Or will you be presenting this at Botany this year?