❤️

After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.

Systematic Biology’s January 2026 issue (75.1) is out! It launches our 75th anniversary series, debuts the new Invited Review article category, features a Tillandsia Spotlight, along with a nice mix of empirical & methods papers. Check it out: academic.oup.com/sysbio/issue... @systbiol.bsky.social

Do you care about the future of the US NSF and science in general? The agency is seeking feedback on the draft Strategic Plan. www.nsf.gov/od/updates/n...

Join @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social for the first webinar in our 2026 series: "Taxonomy: What is it good for?" Free to all! Join us to hear @sandyknapp.bsky.social's "Of course taxonomy matters! The story of the mega-genus Solanum (Solanaceae)" Pls register & share: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Y'all, I just got out of the NSF-BIO webinar where they explained changes to peer review. It's not good. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/changes-to-n...

Come learn with us! #REU!

NSF is about to dismantle NCAR at Russell Vought's direction to protect the fossil fuel industry. It's hard to communicate just how much NCAR does, so let's take a look: I've never worked at NCAR, and I've worked with NCAR researchers once ever. What scientific discoveries has NCAR made possible? 👇

I am a student at Brown in communication with a friend at RIBC. There is an urgent need for blood donations to support RI. Donations in NY, NJ, MN, NB, DE or NJ can help supply RI. Spread the word. www.ribc.org/donate-blood/

Field botanist job with Virginia Natural Heritage, based in Roanoke, VA. $55-65K pay range. Please share widely! www.jobs.virginia.gov/jobs/field-b...

Our plant-focused REU program, led by Prof Nagel, is open for applications, please forward to undergrads and reskeet etap.nsf.gov/award/7573/o... 🌱 🧪

Ok, we're down to the last 10 (!) spots available to register for #SSB2026 in Baton Rouge in January. Who's in? ssb2026.github.io @systbiol.bsky.social

This story has been such a long time coming! We found that the family of MYB transcription factors that makes pink tomatoes has a wacky cousin involved in the evolution of red flowers in Iochroma. #MYBs4Ever

I'm hiring a full time fixed-term 1yr lab tech to assist with field and greenhouse projects related to floral evolution and plant reproductive ecology. Please share! Ideal start date early 2026. jobs.clemson.edu/psc/ps/JOBS/...

Do you want to do a Masters in Evolutionary Biology? The call for applying to the MEME program is now open! MEME is a fantastic 2-year MSc between four European Universities on all areas of Evolutionary Biology. Apply and study in Sweden/France/the Netherlands/Germany/USA/Switzerland! www.evobio.eu

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio @bembidion.bsky.social

I just got a call from my rheumatologist. Because of the changes to Medicaid, which no longer reimburses telemedicine appointments, I can either pay out of pocket or drive two hours away every three months, which is not possible for me most of the year due to my work schedule.

New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Unsolicited listicle: My list of the most criminally underused/underappreciated phylogenetic comparative methods. Note, I am not involved in ANY of these methods; but I see them as things people are often asking of comparative data but have been surprised at how infrequently they have been cited.

Now seeking associate editors for 2026! AEs receive free membership in SSE and free registration to the annual Evolution meeting. Indicate your interest in this short form by September 30: forms.gle/JwAmeM4YV9Fv...

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

We have just cross the $10,000 mark. Let's keep pushing to make that $15K goal! Thanks everyone for standing up for the botanical sciences! #ADayforBSA

🌿 'A Day for BSA' (day-for-bsa.botany.org/2025) is this Wednesday! Join us as we celebrate 130+ years of advancing botanical science, and then help us reach our campaign goal of $15,000 raised for the BSA Endowment with a gift of any amount. Give today! crm.botany.org/civicrm/cont... #ADayforBSA

The Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is Hiring! We are searching for a Director of the Oregon State University Herbarium and applications are welcomed at the ranks of assistant, associate, or full professor.

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

Oh we were the lucky ones to work with @ixchelgr.bsky.social!! And now we are more confident than ever that the nightshade berries are OLD, not like Eocene old, but Cretaceous Dinos-ruled old. Makes sense though, there are over 2K (some times delicious) species in the berry clade!

The #AppsPlantSci special issue "Advances in analyzing and engineering plant metabolic diversity" is online! Thanks to editors @kiratiedge.bsky.social, Gaurav Moghe, @iochromaland.bsky.social & Federico Roda Check out the intro: bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #PlantMetabolism

A little belated but I've started a faculty position at Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology department at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social. I'm absolutely stoked! I'll be recruiting at all levels and will be at #Botany2025 Reach out! www.martinezgomezlab.com

🧪 UPDATE: All 63 House appropriators will meet **this Thursday** about science funding levels. They'll deliberate on the proposed multi-billion dollar cut to NSF's budget ($9.0B --> $7.0B). If you think that's bad for our country, here's who to call: appropriations.house.gov/about/member...

I'm back home with my dad and have thoughts about being an Indigenous scientist and academic. I'm writing this in real time so it might get disrupted and will have typos. I am fairly successful by academic standards. I have a tenure track job, wrote papers, have grant funding, mentor students.

We identified a novel location for acylsugars, on the fruit surface, widely distributed across the Physalis genus. Paves the way for understanding the cell types and regulation responsible to fruit-surface localized acylsugars in collab with @iochromaland.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Please share! Our lab is recruiting a PhD student to join us starting fall 2026. Our group is broadly interested in plant molecular evolution and comparative genomics. More info about our lab and grad programs at Colorado St. is available on our lab website. sites.google.com/site/danielb...

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

North Carolina Botanical Garden (Chapel Hill, NC) is recruiting for a Conservation Botanist! 🎓 Relevant post-Bacc degree req'd ⌛ full time, 2.5-year grant funded position contingent upon additional funding 📨 apps due 7/18 unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/303... #botanyjobs #plantconservationjobs

Four review requests in my inbox this morning. The one I accepted? Society journal. Our Societies consistently reinvest in our communities in ways the glossies never will. And that makes me invest in them.

Crockett: How is it that you can explain that we still are running up the credit card and we have nothing to show for it except for the fact that we won't have food on the tables and we won’t have health care.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

My yeast genomics grad student Kyle and his collaborators at the Pasteur just posted our GWAS study -- the cool takehome is that the variants involved in resistance in diverse Candida strains are generally NOT what has been studied in lab strains 🫣 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Full video here, originally shared by DW. What Jeremy says is exactly right—clear, urgent, and deeply important. Cuts to science affect everyone, sooner or later, everywhere. Illness knows no ideology, no borders. This concerns us all. Watch, reflect, share, discuss. bsky.app/profile/deni...

🌿 Meet Dr. Rocío Deanna,@rociodeanna.bsky.social, a botanist tracing nightshade evolution from ancient fossils to modern ecosystems! Her work bridges paleobotany & phylogenetics to unlock Solanaceae secrets. wp.me/pdRZhH-lYF #Botany #PlantScience 🧪

It seems that only the science community is noticing that NIH and NSF budgets are cut 40% and 55% in the budget bill, respectively. If you live in Maine, West Va, Pennsylvania, Alabama, or Louisiana, CALL YOUR SENATOR as they could make a difference. See below. prospect.org/politics/202...

I remember being anxious as a junior scientist trying to introduce myself to senior people at meetings. Now I'm one of the senior people, I guess. Consider this your invitation to come introduce yourself if we haven't met. #Evol2025

I ❤️ Systematics #Evol2025

Friends at #Evol2025! Tomorrow at 11:30am in the Macro section, Dr. Ixchel Gonzalez-Ramirez is presenting our new timetree for nightshades. Thanks to her, our total-evidence dating models discrete & continuous morphological characters & allows different div dynamics across geologic periods. PLUS

Protect transgender scientists | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A small piece of good news. #SaveTheNSF 🧪 ⚛️ 🎢 #AcademicSky #NSFGRFP

Reminder that SSE members in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, and 152 low-income countries around the world can still get FREE registration for the virtual Evolution meeting! Please share with your colleagues: www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...