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

Great to meet up with Rich Shefferson, who is now a Full Professor and a Department Head at the University of Tokyo. Rich and I overlapped in Ellen Simms’ lab at UC Berkeley, when I was and an undergraduate there. It’s been over two decades since we had a chance to meet up.

Despite the great extent of coastlines of the world (>million miles depending on how you measure it), very few scientists currently work on understanding how plants adapt to this important habitat. This week, I was able to meet with one of these few scientists, Matsuo Itoh, in Kyoto, Japan.

Gonna be some rad science -- @mollyschumer.bsky.social keynote and a bunch of good talks and posters. And I'll personally pay the registration of anyone who wants to come (it's free).

Despite the great extent of coastlines of the world (>million miles depending on how you measure it), very few scientists currently work on understanding how plants adapt to this important habitat. This week, I was able to meet with one of these few scientists, Matsuo Itoh, in Kyoto, Japan.

There is nowhere else in the world (that I am aware of) where phenology has been recorded as regularly as in Kyoto, Japan. Records here of peak cherry blossom bloom go back to the year 812. Those blooms have been getting earlier in recent years due to climate change and urban heat island effects.

Review: What happens when it gets too hot – the vulnerability of plant reproduction in a warming world plantae.org/review-what-...

Short Kyoto phenology watch Day 1.

So cool reading this from Kyoto, Japan, where it is now a few days from peak.

Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens! Read it in Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social

Phenology watch is big in Japan. #sakura

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

Modifying meiotic recombination by targeting chromatin regulators to crossover hotspots in Arabidopsis From: www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #PlantScience

We're hiring a postdoctoral researcher in plant genome engineering with expertise in synthetic biology, gene editing, and omics, with an interest in developing next-generation technologies for plants.🪴🧬 Available immediately. If interested, send your CV! Feel free to share with your networks.

BREAKING: @delauro.house.gov announces at a House Oversight hearing with NIH director Jay Bhattacharya that OMB approved the agency's apportionment last night. That means the agency should have access to its appropriated funds — 42 days after its spending bill passed.

Some insight into why Congressionally appropriated funds are still not flowing as they should from America’s science agencies. www.science.org/content/arti...

Paul Ehrlich has died. Most will remember him for "The Population Bomb." But for many of us, Ehrlich and Raven 1964 was a foundational read that influenced our careers. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My speech last week for the #StandUpForScience National Day of Action rally at the Michigan State Capitol. When we protect science, we protect democracy too. #Lansing @standupforscience.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSMZ...

Does the time 1:59 have any particular significance on Pi Day? Just curious.

New preprint from Asia Hightower @puffballove.bsky.social showing that heat hurts reproduction + fruit development without affecting vegetative growth in Capsella bursa-pastoris www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new preprint reports an interesting analytical approach for RNA-seq based gene expression analysis of a ~500 plant diversity panel of switchgrass grown in the contrasting environments of Michigan and Texas. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Big congrats to former Lowry Lab postdoc Daniel Anstett, who's paper: "Rapid evolution predicts demographic recovery after extreme drought" is out in Science today. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Phytochrome B integrates jasmonic acid and warm temperature signaling pathways to regulate cotyledon chloroplast development www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am SO THRILLED to share our first fully-lab lab paper!!!!!! Led by @hybridzones.bsky.social & @hagarsoliman.bsky.social, w/ a major assist from @pfschwarz.bsky.social!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read more below, if you're curious (you should be- it's AWESOME!!!!!!!) link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌿 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!

Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data. The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k... Figure 1 shows they key result

A centromere but not just a centromere: structure and evolution of a selfish chromosomal supergene in monkeyflowers www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am happy to announce the launch of a new Arabidopsis genomics resource! Check out arabidopsislyrata.org Now you can easily look at the natural genetic variation across the entire species range of A. lyrata and A. arenosa.

Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) has been the go to program for analysis of gene expression modules for nearly two decades but it is a difficult to implement. To make it easier to use WGCNA, I used Codex to build a human in the loop agentic workflow. github.com/lowrylab/WGC...

Are you a grad student attending #Evol2026? Submit your talk for the SSE Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation! Finalists will present their talks during the virtual portion of the meeting. Apply during registration. Deadline April 15! shorturl.at/qDIP4 @evolmtg.bsky.social

The next BAPG has been announced! April 11 at Davis organized by the inimitable @jrossibarra.bsky.social! bapg-conference.github.io

Nice new collaborative paper out this week led by Rob Heckman, using a data set we collected way back when I was a postdoc: "Correlational selection and genetic architecture shape the evolution of the leaf economics spectrum in a perennial grass" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The Guerrero Lab at NC State University seeks a postdoc in computational evolutionary genetics. Ideal candidates have quantitative skills. Apply by March 10, 2026, via [email protected]. More info: rguerrer.org #postdoc

Hey @derekdenney.bsky.social & Annabelle Taylor wrote a nice essay about why we should care about plant reproduction + heat. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Crop scientists have long recognized that reproduction is going to be the first point of failure for plants with rising global temperatures. However, this has often been overlooked by those studying natural populations. In this new review, we try to change that. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

The Bart Lab at UC Berkeley is looking for a postdoc. Please share!

Turner et al. investigated the role of chromosomal rearrangements during habitat shifts in two locally adapted populations of Drosophila from the island of São Tomè; findings suggest that rearrangements may act as a source of innovation. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf236 #genome #evolution #drosophila

Dance of the Wood Storks.

🎉🎉🎉

The program for the 2026 New York Population Genetics meeting, hosted by at the @simonsfoundation.org on March 9th 2026, is now up: events.simonsfoundation.org/event/7c91dd....

What happens when the ocean — and the expectations placed on scientists — are changing at the same time? As a Bilinski Fellow at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, Mikhaila Redovian explored how marine scientists are responding through collaboration and new ways of working:

This feels straight out of an intense dream about our switchgrass diversity panel experiments.

New preprint from our big collaborative evolution experiment in 9 whole lakes in Alaska, written by McGill grad student @lucaseckert.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What happens if you put a mixture of multiple source populations together to complete & evolve in multiple new lakes?

This article is now published! academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... We’ve added a few new analyses. First off, we show that, while gene presence absence variation (PAV) scales with evolutionary distance in both plants and animals, the base level and rate of accrual are both twice as high in plants.

New review! Theory & a practical guide to structural variants in popgen🧬 Many thanks to my co-authors: @rebekahoomen.bsky.social @annatigano.bsky.social @marenwellenreuther.bsky.social @janawold.bsky.social @dlfield.bsky.social @clairemerot.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

PEQG! My favorite conference ever*. Single session, fantastic talks, great discussions. Only once every 2 years. And in the best conference location too! Abstract deadline coming up Feb 5! *Disclosure: I am required to say it's the best conference because it is and I told my mom I wouldn't lie.

The genetic and developmental enigma of rhizomes: crucial traits with limited understanding. arxiv.org/abs/2601.10847

Michigan midwinter phenology watch: no leaves, -20F windchills. See you in spring.

Check out AJB's special issue "Paradigm shifts in flower color" a bunch of cool papers on flower coloration with a focus on non-pollinator drivers of color variation 🌸🌼🌺https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15372197/2026/113/1

The snow is coming down sideways. The windchill is at -6. There is a dude at the Meijer in shorts. Michigan, you never fail.