I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

My daughter had the MMR vaccine today. This was based on science.

"Why do queen bumblebees emerge from hibernation during weekends?" I love this framing about bias in hobbyist-collected data.

Trinity College Dublin herbarium are now on @gbif.org! We have just 52k records for now and mostly minimal data with full data and images to follow, but its a big step forward. www.gbif.org/dataset/5ec4...

A new paper by @petermoonlight.bsky.social published in #EJBotany #OpenAccess @thebotanics.bsky.social on the names in the genus #Begonia published in Vellozo’s #FloraFluminensis: rbge.cc/47Q6wmL

Madrid Code online!! 🎉🪸🍄🌿 www.iaptglobal.org/_functions/code/madrid

I'm sorry, what 🤯

Five species from Ireland's temperate rainforest in five minutes, presented by me! I am super happy with how this turned out, so do take a look. And a huge thank you to Michelle, Daniel, Peter L, and Jenny for making this happen! youtu.be/xHRUBeukH6E

Five species from Ireland's temperate rainforest in five minutes, presented by me! I am super happy with how this turned out, so do take a look. And a huge thank you to Michelle, Daniel, Peter L, and Jenny for making this happen! youtu.be/xHRUBeukH6E

This, combined with two factor authentification, is now at least half of the job of an academic.

I'm essentially unable to log into any websites run by Editorial Manager. I have 20 something different logins saved, with different usernames and passwords, for different journals. My password manager is useless, and I am at the point where every login requires a PW reset.

My predictive text used a sad emoji. Is it depressed?

Michigan State University is hiring a new Director of our herbarium! This is an open rank, tenure-stream faculty position, with research focus in plant or fungal systematics, ecology, and/or evolution Please consider applying and help spread the word! plantbiology.natsci.msu.edu/job-postings...

Finally finished extracting and plotting all the locations in Jamaica that Hans Sloane (1660-1753) mentioned in his work, the Voyage to the Islands. Unsurprisingly, they are mostly in the south-central part of the island, but also show his trip north @nhm-london.bsky.social @rxcoulton.bsky.social

Meanwhile, in the real world, we just missed out flight because of a 1 hr queue to check in a baby seat followed by a 2 hr security queue at Birmingham airport 🤬

The bicycle played a rich role in Ireland’s past. Now it is key to our future | Cian Ginty

Reckon so - especially as it lends credence to my lobed maidenhair spleenwort Asplenium trichomanes subsp pachyrhacis at Knaresborough Castle after several years fruitless checking of specimens (thanks to @bsbiscience.bsky.social for the tip!) #UrbanPlants #WildflowerHour

Do they count as #UrbanPlants if growing on the wall of a derelict seaside castle? #WildflowerHour Who cares, especially when Limonium binervosa is so cool 😍

That has got to be the best "herbarium ghost" I've seen.

A seaside quartet from Brittas Bay, County Wicklow, for #WildflowerHour The Sticky Stork's Bill was a new one for me 💚

PhD: Plant-Soil Field Ecology / Ecophysiology -> tinyurl.com/k2ymn5mv PhD: Computational methods to use our plant-soil image data -> tinyurl.com/4hbcwa8v Research Assistant/Technician -> tinyurl.com/ydvbpj6n (links will be updated to my university website once online)

Niche, but can anyone on Bluesky date a 1980s (?) Irish Lucozade bottle? This one turned up under a floor in a historic building, and we'd love to know when someone was last down there.

I really hope someone tracks how many arrive early and how many arrive late.

A #RandomActofCrochetKindness by Andrea, found somewhere on a train on the east coast today. Looks like a fly agaric (Muscaria amanita) to me, and is now happily in its natural mossy habitat.

This is the best graph I've seen in a while 📊

I am delighted to have been involved in the description of Begonia chucantiensis in @phytokeys.pensoft.net. This was collected by Juan Carrión and colelagues, who contacted me to see if we could describe it together. doi.org/10.3897/phyt...

🌍 Boraginales, a diverse order of ~2,700 species, has long puzzled botanists with shifting classifications. Now, this study uses Angiosperms353 phylogenomics + fruit & flower traits to propose a clearer family-level structure. (2/8)

🌿Check the newly published article ‘An updated phylogeny of Boraginales based on the Angiosperms353 probe set: a roadmap for understanding morphological evolution’ in @annbot.bsky.social by Maria-Anna Vasile et al.🧵(1/8) 👉 doi.org/pgvm @petermoonlight.bsky.social @timboeh.bsky.social

Birds are dinosaurs Whales are hoofed mammals Bugs are crustaceans Isn’t nature wonderful?

Check out this new #AJB commentary by Nicholas Turland! From the Shenzhen Code to the Madrid Code: New rules & recommendations for naming #algae, #fungi & plants doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience

Ironically, my love/hate relationship with taxonomy is difficult to classify

Introducing Diastema calcola J.L.Clark & Moonlight, just described in the Gesneriaceae. This species is found on limestone in S. Ecuador and N. Peru and Vulnerable under IUCN Criteria. Genetic and morphological work shows that while superficially similar to D. racemiferum, it is distantly related!

It is tulip season in Dublin

Tropical forests are not all the same: they show many shades of geographical variation. Our new paper in Nature led by @jeaggu.bsky.social combines field and satellite data to make a first map the canopy functional traits of the world’s tropical forests: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For more information, please go to tcd.ie/hr/vacancies/ and search the 'School of Natural Sciences'. You will see that we also have several Assistant Professor positions open at the moment. Please pass this on to any early career academics / postdocs, especially those who are new to this platform!

We're hiring! Assistant Professor in Plant Conservation. The successful applicant will have experience in field botany, plant conservation, and/or restoration ecology. Contact me if you have any questions. Please circulate! #PlantScience #Botany #restoration #ecology

World Flora Online is now on Bluesky! Follow us for more updates and news from WFO.

It this a cool paper? Yes! But if I wrote a paper for every "here's a cool specimen, but we can't conclusively say it's from X or Y, but it probably is" I'd never stop

If you see this quote with flowers from your gallery. We can all use some beauty right now. Sonchus acaulis from the highest point of Gran Canaria

herbariodigital.cl now boasts 100,000 digitized specimens! 🎉 This incredible milestone was marked by the recently discovered 𝘉𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘰𝘱𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢. Advancing efforts to integrate Chile's biodiversity data for exploration, research, and management. #DigitalHerbarium ieb-chile.cl/noticia/herb...

1/ Important read for anyone using, contributing, or building large databases by aggregating data sources. Discusses issues with data quality, duplication, credit attribution, etc, and includes recommendations for improvement doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #ecopubs

New phylogenomic study of #Magnoliidae: so excited to see this out at last! doi.org/10.1002/ajb2...

Molecular biology and the internet have had no effect on the rate of plant species discovery. The title is somewhat clickbaity but probably correct. stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/39768 My colleague Roger doing some investigating of World Flora Online data we manage.

I wonder if there are differences between global north vs south countries, especially re fieldwork in the tropics. Ecology students and ecologist in the global south have still good access to field sites and experiences, despite politics and socioeconomic instability 🤔 www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Nice new #Malesherbia species from the #fog #oases in the pre-Andean desertic slopes of #Arequipa, southern #Peru. phytotaxa.mapress.com/pt/article/v...

Some "species" from today's plant description workshop. Students had to design their own plant (from a selection of organs in a powerpoint) and paste them together to make a plausible plant, then come up with a botanical description for it!

#BegoniaOfTheWeek is cinnabarina. This is a tuberous species from montane forests in Bolivia and Argentina.

Very disppointed to receive this feedback from peer review with Diversity and Distributions. This is not a professional quality of peer review, and it should not have been forwarded by the editors 😡 Peer review should never be an opportunity to anonymously insult our colleagues! 🧪

World Flora Online December 2024 Plant List and data release is live. All made possible thanks to the 195 co-authors. (See 2 of 2) available to browse here www.wfoplantlist.org. all the data is here doi.org/10.5281/zeno... #wfo #worldfloralonline #botany 1 of 2