Eight new species of Greigia (Bromeliaceae) from the Andean cloud forests! Their pineapple-flavored fruits feed spectacled bears, their flowers smell like fermented milk, and one, G. muysca, honors the Indigenous Muysca people. Read more: doi.org/10.11646/

So many stories about fall leaves and red flowers fall into this category. Telling people the stories of their world so they can see and appreciate what is all around them.

Hello I am back on Bluesky! I was overwhelmed with the world, the world is overwhelming. But I am now back to talk about spider gardening, leaving leaves and the nuns of ecological restoration. xo!

Really, the only good use of forsythia.

Red Trillium with a crane fly pollinator. The flower emits a stinky scent, attracting flies and beetles. If you look close, you can see pollen grains in the fly’s legs.

Trees make women happy. I could have told you that, but now there's a study. Researchers looked at 33,000 women, how many trees they lived around, and how likely they were to be depressed. The results were that more trees = less depression.

Abundant Eocene fossils of plants and animals are found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. This fossil Pseudosalix Hanleyi, with stems, leaves and flowers preserved, is harder to find than a T-rex tooth!

Urban trees, even small ones, can reduce water run off by 25%!

The alemdro tree doesn't just survive lightning strikes--it appears to use the electricity to fry parasites and kill competitors. Fascinating story by @erikstokstad.bsky.social for @science.org!

Bad news: a massive study in Science found that US butterflies abundance is down 22% in the last 20 years. Good news: butterflies are incredibly environmentally responsive. If they have the conditions they need to thrive, populations can bounce back quickly. Protect & cultivate native plants! 🌎🧪🌿🌱

Times are bleak, it’s true. But people are still out here doing incredible work now, when it matters most. Activists in KY bought land slated for a new prison, and will now fill it with native plants and use it as an intertribal gathering location. 🌱🌎🧪🌿

Trump won’t let the team working on National Nature Assessment publish their report. Researchers are planning to publish it anyway and we should all commit to getting it out there when they do.

Our newest study is out today! We found that 9 y after fire there were HUGE differences in bacterial and fungal communities between neighboring burned soils and small unburned refugia. Contact me directly if you can't access the paper and I will email you a pdf copy! doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

A long-running study out of England has found that, as you use fertilizers on landscapes, you lose pollinators. The mechanism is that fertilizers encourages grasses, which outcompete insect pollinated flowers and reduce floral resources. 🌿🌱🧪🌎

A mountain sacred to the Maori people has been granted personhood under the laws of New Zealand. apnews.com/article/moun...

New Bee Alert! This little blue mining bee only visits a couple of species of nightshade in flowers in southern grasslands. Their name, Andrena androfovea, translates to "eyeliner boy" because the males have this fuzzy stripe of hair that is usually only on females. 🌎🧪🌿🌱

Seed banks are a way for plants to travel through time, asleep until they’re called back up into the sun. Nitrogen fertilizers threaten that process. 🌎🌱🌿🧪

A completely new plant lineage has been discovered, from 47 million years ago. Researchers named it Othniophyton elongatum, meaning “alien plant.”

Pesticides are a major reason so many native bees, butterflies, & other pollinators are in serious trouble. So why does the EPA only consider risks to honey bees when approving pesticides for sale? @earthjustice.bsky.social & Xerces are calling on the EPA to fix this flaw🔗 xerces.org/press/pollin...

This is dangerous rhetoric. As much as I’ve benefitted from Attenborough’s work over the years, he’s done a massive amount of harm by, not just ignoring, but actively erasing the people in the various ecosystems he shows to the world.

New paper out! We show that heart cockles use bundled fiber optic cables to transmit light through "skylights" in their shell for their photosynthetic algae. The skylights filter out harmful UV radiation. These coral analogues are cool critters!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Remember a few years ago when we found out that some moths emit ultrasonic clicks to jam bat sonar? Then recently we heard that some plants make ultrasonic clicks when dehydrated? Well now researchers have found that some moths HEAR those plant clicks and use them to decide where to lay eggs. 🪲🧪🌿🌎

A must-read: Patrick Chandler Brown — named after the PCB chemicals dumped in his community — purchased the plantation where his great-grandfather was enslaved and is in the process of transforming it to serve farmers like him

One easy way to increase wild urban bee diversity is to make sure you plants many different SHAPES of flowers. 🌎🪲🌿🧪

ETHIOPIAN WOLVES AS (possible) KNIPHOFIA POLLINATORS!!!!

Hello world! Also, the new grass phylogeny is now published: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A new Forensic Architecture report details ecological destruction in Gaza. Between Oct 23 and June 24, 83% of all plant life was destroyed. Along with 70% of agricultural land and >45% of greenhouses forensic-architecture.org/investigatio...

Yet another example of restoration of island biodiversity following invasive species removal. "What is unfolding is an ecological renaissance, since the rodents have gone." www.goodnewsnetwork.org/cloud-forest...

Every one of us can take meaningful action to support the plants and animals of our region. Great piece from @margaretrenkl.bsky.social on orgs helping people to garden ecologically www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/o...

I’ve read quite a few studies now showing that bees like cities. Urban heat island effect and other harsh city conditions don’t seem to bother them. A lack of flowers and suitable habitat are the limiting factors: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Somehow, I did a TED talk. So happy it’s out in the world. Biodiversity for the masses!! Everyone, get gardening. www.ted.com/talks/rebecc...

Studying bee communities is critical to assessing their role in ecosystems and agricultural systems. A new meta-analysis of 72 bee-sampling studies reveals best practices—and the surprising breadth and scope necessary—for thoroughly documenting a local bee community.

Roses are red, But that's not quite true, They absorb every wavelength of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, *Except* for that hue.

Per @jessicavalenti.bsky.social, the total number in all the red states is 65,000. Not a typo.

Native plants + solar panels + bees. Good stuff. 🧪🌎🌿

Awesome. Bees unhook flight muscles to vibrate their bodies so that pollen just explodes off a flower. Here is a review that I am excited to read:

New study shows just how toxic rural areas have become for bees: while less diverse, “urban areas support elevated levels of microbial diversity and more complex networks between microbes and plants than rural areas.” 🧪🌎🌿

*Depeche Mode voice* Your own—

Hilarious win for urban ecology folks: smarter bees can hack it in the city. 🧪🌿

I am so envious of the person that got to write this headline! (and Black Soldier Flies in spaaaaace) www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/s...

Great coverage in the NYT of the study linking racist redlining + urban ecology. "Often the interests of other species and marginalized humans align....We need to start thinking about humans and wildlife together in the landscape and mitigate things that will help both.”

A new study published in Nature on the decline of #amphibians reveals that they remain more threatened with extinction than any other vertebrate group. Many of the worst declines are being caused by #ClimateChange. @sciencenews.bsky.social #biodiversity 🌍🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/amph...

From the archives: A history of our friend, the wild turkey.

Two weeks ago, Jewish Currents interviewed three doctors in Gaza to show the world the direness of their situation. The story was just updated to reflect one of the doctors was killed by an airstrike in his own home, making this quote even more gutting. jewishcurrents.org/we-have-lost...

Politicians will discount constituent letters if they disagree with the letters. But providing strong, unambiguous evidence of expertise in the policy area can reduce this discounting, finds Bergan et al. When writing legislators, provide a link or cite to your expertise doi.org/10.1093/hcr/...

Chicory, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Happy third anniversary of the funniest political moment of all time.

Multiple refugee camps. Schools. UN shelters. An ambulance. Now, a pediatric hospital.

“When I say we have no water, I need people to comprehend that we spend days without drinking a single drop of water,” she said. “That’s how limited it is.”

Geometrid Moth (Helicopage cf. hirundinalis, Geometrinae, Geometridae) Pu'er, Yunnan, China 📷 #invertebrate #naturalist