Are you an audiobook girlie/boychik/enbyette? I have good news! I read books with my eyes AND my ears, & it took me awhile to leave Audible, but I finally did & a) all my Audible books are still available to me & b) Libro.fm is great AND supports local indie bookstores, too. Yay books!

NEW PREPRINT: You may recall Joshua trees started flowering fully four months early this year. Was that due to climate change? Well, @colincarlson.bsky.social and I called in Chris Callahan to formally test that hypothesis, and the answer is... it probably wasn't! doi.org/10.64898/202...

Sorry y'all but I am going to have to be incessant about this for the next two months because the number one thing I encounter every time I mention it is 'wow I had no idea!'

Started morning with field trip to the Bad Goose Farm + Nursery (badgoosefarm.com/the-bad-geese) where founders Zeke Goodband & Ali Wilder showed us around the nursery & orchards. Had the great privilege of seeing grafted clones of the historic Radcliffe apple tree found @rad-institute.bsky.social.

First real post on the new blog! If you follow human genetics, you've likely of "missing heritability". If you look at twins to estimate heritability, you get values much larger than what molecular genomic methods produce. IQ, for example, goes from 50-80% heritability to 10-15%. Which is right?

Cool, so NSF is now going to be used to essentially launder money to tech bros because universities are just too cumbersome and disciplinary oversight and regulations and accountability are all just too stifling for innovation. $1.5B for “X-Labs.”

Botanical parasitism of an insect by a parasitic plant: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

"Fuel treatments reduced wildfire spread and severity, avoiding an estimated $2.8 billion in damages by limiting structure loss, cutting CO2 emissions, and lowering fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure. Each dollar invested yielded $3.73 in expected benefits." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 SHC Student Awards! Mayra Alejandra Herrera Pacheco (MS student) working with Dr. Manuel Luján Anzola at the Universidad de Antioquia, for the project “Taxonomic revision and update of the genus Arawakia (Clusiaceae s.s.) for Colombia".

Researcher in Plant Resilience - Wageningen www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/r... Within the plant health team, you will be responsible for coordinating and carrying out trials involving plant diseases and pests in the laboratory and greenhouse. #BotanyJobs

1/ New paper out in Nature Communications! We studied the salivary amylase gene, AMY1, in Indigenous Andean populations and found evidence that high AMY1 copy number rapidly increased in frequency, likely through recent positive selection. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

A landmark study following 15+ years of collaboration by researchers at the Arboretum, @duke-university.bsky.social, @harvard.edu, and partners in Mexico published this week on @pnas.org. It reveals what made the mountains of Mexico and Central America a hotspot for oak biodiversity: arb.eco/4tVWclh

Please join us in congratulating 2026 GSA Early Career Medal recipient @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social of @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social!🎉 Recognized for pioneering research on plant adaptation, genetic diversity, & climate change, he is shaping the future of biodiversity science. 🔗: buff.ly/7MBsZ4l

Fascinated by tropical phenology and looking for a PhD program? Happy to help with idea and proposal development: www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Bottom left is my desktop. It’s what I see when I waken my laptop. It still makes me gape in wonder every time.

Big fans of David Attenborough in this house

The statue in Waterloo Place, which appeared early Wednesday, depicts a man proudly hoisting a flag— but the flag is blinding him. n.pr/495b4Fq

I am hiring a popgen postdoc! Looking for a creative scientist to join us at USC to investigate recessive variation and complex traits in model or non-model species. The project is funded by a multi-year NIH grant, contract can be renewed. Job add & details 👇🏽 usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Simons Graduate Fellowship Applications are open! If you're applying to Ph.D. programs in ecology and/or evolution this year, or if you're an incoming Ph.D. student who won't start your degree program until Fall 2026 or later, apply! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Applications for the Simons Graduate Fellowship in Ecology & Evolution are open for incoming PhD students entering programs in Fall 2026 or 2027! If you are looking to start a program in 2027 and interested in my lab, let me know. I'd be happy to chat about this opportunity.

The Barrick & Lenski Labs in Dept of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology at Michigan State Univ seek a Research Assistant II to manage their research operations and participate in projects related to microbial evolution and synthetic biology. See details below. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

No surprise - its Optix and Ivory again - amazing predictability of gene re-use in convergent mimicry phenotypes across amazonian mimicry rings @joanameier.bsky.social @wtf-r-species.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

🎉💚The Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution turns 20 this year: As we head toward the annual meeting, we invite you to share your favourite memories, photos, and throwbacks from past CSEE meetings and events! Tag your post with hashtag #SCEECSEE20

I thought that I knew all the things about mice. Those of you who know me probably thought so too.....BUT I just found out about GLACIER MICE!!!! OMG! Squee! 🧊🐭😍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMp...

Research from the lab on the evolution of size and plumage dimorphism in birds! Grad student Catherine Alverson examined how species move between size and plumage dimorphism categories. While those results largely recapitulated previous work, there was an intriguing new finding [1/3]

Madagascar’s ancient baobabs store 700 years of climate secrets – what they reveal theconversation.com/madagascars-...

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Do chameleons evolve to match their habitats? Petford et al. reveal morphological convergence in Bradypodion lineages, suggesting habitat, not ancestry, drives morphology. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Are you following the law? the board asks NSF. We don’t listen to you anymore, NSF responds.

well that's not great

The attack on education in the US is not new, but the slow fuse that arguably started with Reagan is now setting off detonations across K-12 and higher education that are going to be incredibly difficult to walk back if we don’t treat this like the urgent crisis it is.

We didn’t get here by accident. This is the outcome of a war designed to undermine education as a public good. Public education has shifted from a fundamental right to “woke indoctrination,” a framing that’s coming from the highest levels of government. College is a now a financial burden by design.

Seasonal job available in Burlington, VT in invasive pest ecologcal genomics! The successful candidate will work with myself and @jcbnunez.bsky.social on seasonal adaptation in Drosophila susukii. #popGen #evolution #genomics 🧪🧬🖥️ Apply by April 7: northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

🔥🔥🔥

UConn’s Corpse Flower opens TONIGHT!! The greenhouse is open till 2am tonight so people can see this nocturnal marvel. It hasn’t bloomed since 2013! Go see it!! #nutmegsky #UConn

hah jk it's happening tonight! plants gonna plant.

Check out these highlights from the latest American Journal of #Botany! botany.org/file.php?fil... Find the issue Table of Contents at bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15372197.... #plantscience #botany

Hey, this is fun (I missed it on #EarthDay but it’s still fun today 😅). Use this NASA outreach tool to spell your name with LandSat images of our beautiful Earth! science.nasa.gov/mission/land...

If you're looking for a weekend listen, this wide-ranging convo full of mutual love for plants, trees & the planet was a joy. Also discussed When Trees Testify (out now from @henryholtbooks.bsky.social/ @macmillanusa.bsky.social). Thanks JVN & Getting Better with JVN team ❤️! youtu.be/q2t3W18cp4I?...

Happy Arbor Day! As we mainline a heavy dose of touching grass into our veins this weekend, let us also gander at some trees and talk about (tree) sex. www.jezebel.com/your-dumbest...

Thrilled to have my first PhD paper with @mmdesai.bsky.social out! @science.org Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Thread below: #mevosky #evosky #evobio #popgen #evolsky #ecoevo #molevol

Proud of this subtle paper from the lab. Went out to test for cryptic eco-evo dynamics in response to the urban heat island. Found evolution, ecological change, and local adaptation, but no feedbacks (and that woodlice have been common in NA at least 200 yrs? Read to learn more.

Wins matter, not only because they build movements, but they also let us know what works!

Cocaine bear, meet cocaine salmon www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/s...

♻️ Everything everywhere all at once? Disentangling the long-lasting riddle of phylogenetic relationships and cryptic hybridization in the amphitropical genus Larrea by María Paula Quiroga and co-authors. Full #openaccess 👉 doi.org/10.1093/aobp... #PlantScience

This unbelievable microscopic image taken by Hans Kerp is of an early land plant from ~409 million years ago. Exquisite preservation in Scottish sandstone (Rhynie Chert) reveals sperm cells (upper right) released on a fateful day by the “antheridium.” The paper: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

New year, new designs! Working on some little Darwin earrings for #Botany2026 - stay tuned! Hopefully they'll be on the Etsy shop in a week or so : ) #bluebeehivestudio #darwin #botany2026 #sciart

Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲 “One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.” www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...

👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium: Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology Pls RT to help get the word out!

The University of California system and California State system together enroll 770,000 students. 770,000 That's three quarters of a MILLION students in a PUBLIC education system that ranges in quality from good to world-class. This is a miracle.