Wild rice is a perennial, creeping plant. The secret to its perennial growth habit lies in a developmental reversal directed by small RNAs. This image illustrates how combining perennial genes with prostrate growth genes allows cultivated rice to mimic wild rice. Learn more: https://scim.ag/40GOjDb

Spring is arriving, but there's still snow in the forecast! How do late #winter storms affect our migratory #birds? Out now in @natecoevo.nature.com, we ask that Q with 25+yrs of #CitizenScience data and ~400 museum specimens collected after the 2021 Great TX Freeze: rdcu.be/e7aUy #EcoEvo #evolution

In an era of highly partisan politics in the US, I want to highlight this promising bi-partisan bill to study biodiversity genomics in US National Parks. Consider sending a letter of support to these reps for the Living Library Act! www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/pre...

Thanks @elinck.bsky.social @mdcarling.bsky.social for the opportunity to assemble this genome, which will be an important resource for future comparative and pop gen work. Given its close and iconic mutualism with whitebark pine, Clark’s Nutcracker is basically a plant, hence my role in the project

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

Recombination suppression in plant adaptation and speciation #TansleyReview by Zhang et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

my Ph.D. student Lizzy & I contributed to this perspective on range-wide signatures of local adaptation in American Pika—her first coauthuored paper: doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Just saw this new preprint - includes flow ctyometry on 45,000 silica-dried samples for 1135 species - this is amazing and such a great resource for anyone attempting to do flow cytometry: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#TansleyInsight: Evolutionary #genetics of alternative splicing in #plants @peterinnes1.bsky.social, Nolan Kane & @chriscrsmith.bsky.social 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue

Can we predict gene expression evolution? In flour beetles, transcriptome-wide selection predicts expression change, with indirect selection acting strongest on pleiotropic, network-central genes—linking co-expression architecture to adaptation. academic.oup.com/evlett/artic... Photo: Udo Schmidt

Why do selfing rates vary across a species’ range? In alpine monkeyflower, self-fertilization increases away from the range center, supporting the abundant center hypothesis over historical range expansion in shaping reproductive assurance. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan... Photo Credit: Brewbooks

I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

Climate drives variation in optimal phenology Clark et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/MCQ8GR...

Thanks nature news for featuring our recent preprint on 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘣𝘢 led by @hbrappap.bsky.social (check out preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...) #protistsonsky

🌻 Sharing this preprint where we assembled 3 new chromosome-level genomes, including the first for Asteraceae's South American sister Calyceraceae! Asteraceae uses all the tricks when it comes to being the most ecologically successful family of flowering plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our review on alternative splicing evolution, with @peterinnes1.bsky.social and Nolan Kane!

Evolutionary #genetics of alternative splicing in plants #TansleyInsight by @peterinnes1.bsky.social, Nolan C. Kane and @chriscrsmith.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #PlantScience #speciation

Thanks to @chriscrsmith.bsky.social for the invitation to write this Tansley Insight together! First pub in one of my favorite journals @newphyt.bsky.social 🌱 🥹

Proud of the latest edition of my free intro biostats book. gitrepo: github.com/ybrandvain/b... book: ybrandvain.github.io/biostats/ Not complete but at a good point to take a break, and I think its quite usable dm me with comments , ideas etc

@ecoevorxiv.bsky.social Excited to read this review, “Genomic insights into the origin of ecotypes”, by Johannesson et al ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Check out our new preprint! This was such a great paper to work on with @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and the rest of the team!

Plant genome sequencing needs to go tropical. Check out this commentary I wrote with Felipe Zapata (UCLA) and María José Sanín (Montgomery Botanical Center) out today in Nature Reviews Biodiversity 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The Todesco lab at MSL UBC is looking for a Research Tech to help us run the lab and do fancy science! Good wet lab skills and enthusiasm for plant research are required, experience with genomics and bioinformatics is a plus. See ad below, please spread the voice! 🧬🌻🧪🌱🔬🧫 tinyurl.com/5bnfyadw

Hello bluesky community! I'm hiring a postdoc to do machine learning in population genetics. Starting to build up a lab at Indiana University Bloomington where I just started a faculty position. Apply with the below link: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/30325

Big news! We are recruiting a postdoc to work on tomatillo evolution: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta.... The clade containing tomatillos and its allies (ca 300 spp) has evolved lantern fruits at least 25 times - we want to know why! Join us @rociodeanna.bsky.social & @caschenck-bio.bsky.social

The final version of our paper on the evolution of supergenes and mechanisms underlying distyly in Linum is now up at New Phytologist doi.org/10.1111/nph....

maybe my favorite paper I've written, I have a synthesis out today early access in @asn-amnat.bsky.social today that attempts to answer a simple but slippery question: what is an elevational range? doi.org/10.1086/737130

In case you couldn't bear to read all the way to the end (understandable), here is the proposed picture for the BIO Directorate.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

Nine years ago today 🌿 Linum lewisii, our Lewis Flax, blooming on the Mesa Trail #nativeplants

Great writing from @elinck.bsky.social touching on the biological, philosophical, and legal questions surrounding “de-extinction” and the Endangered Species Act www.hcn.org/articles/de-...

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

Hot off the presses and so so thrilled. Thanks to @inaturalist.bsky.social + computer vision we found something beautifully simple: Red and orange flowers bloom later than all the other colors in the eastern United States. Paper here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kwzh3QW8S...

Oh, but fortunately there is this handy News and Views that makes everything clear! 🌻🫄 @ubcbotany.bsky.social rdcu.be/ef9aW

Some additional #NSF thoughts. As always, these thoughts are mine alone. But here goes, It seems the damage this situation has already caused to the research enterprise in the US may be catastrophic (and irreparable?).

It's been a busy year! The second thing I'd like to share is our is our pre-print on the evolution of the exquisitely cool Cannabaceae sex chromosomes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

King tide today making sea foam like little clouds 🌊 ☁️ ☁️ ☁️

Excited to see this paper out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Linum puberulum, our Plains Flax, blooming at Pawnee Buttes #nativeplants #FallBackFlowers #FallBack to June 2 🌿

Where sky meets sage & snow still blankets mountains. And the Sun, our beautiful local star, fuels cycles of wildflowers from season to season, from seed to bloom. While the ground is swept with frost this morning, six months past & six months future, Prairie Flax blossom. #FallBackFlowers 4 Jun 24

Sanderlings? Learning my shorebirds. Fun to watch them zoom around near the waves

Annual Heredity prize for the Best Student Paper 2024 Kate Rick from the University of Western Australia has won this year's competition. Congratulations Kate 🎉 @gensocuk.bsky.social

Honored to have my paper on alternative splicing evolution in sunflower ecotypes shortlisted for the Heredity 2024 Best Student Paper award! @heredityjournal.bsky.social www.nature.com/collections/...

Had a nice trip to the Center for Comparative Genomics @calacademy.bsky.social recently for a workshop—got to learn library prep for degraded/historic/museum samples using New England Biolabs FFPE kit. Easy protocol and it gave great results in my case from a 130 y.o. herbarium sample (flax)!

going to be Posting on here now