Super excited about this review/new data preprint on aquatic plant photosynthetic methods - turns out its *hard* to measure stuff underwater! Led by awesome grad in the lab @ellliieee.bsky.social with postdoc @wickellomics.bsky.social and some brilliant people at LiCor! 💧🌿

GRFP call is out: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... Deadlines pushed back to Nov.

As we all eagerly (anxiously?) await NSF's release of the 2026 GRFP solicitation, please consider signing up as a mentor for BSA's GRFP workshop. We especially need more senior mentors (PIs, postdocs, and research scientists)!

I got an email yesterday afternoon that my NSF SPRF Postdoctoral Fellowship was terminated. My grant focused on testing interventions to address online misinformation and I was 8 months into a two year appointment.

The first step in generating public support for science is telling people what the heck we're doing and why it matters! If you are a researcher who benefits from federal funding, please consider writing a letter to your local paper: blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-...

The reviews are in, this was the best Quillwort Conference ever! Thanks so much to our speakers: Gemma Milly Lisa George David Wickell @wickellomics.bsky.social Megan Nibbelink @megantheebotanist.bsky.social Jacob Suissa John Evans

The National Science Foundation benefits communities in every state.

RNA xkcd.com/3056

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

I absolutely love my new 'Isoetes nerd' mug courtesy of the multi-talented, and incredibly thoughtful @ellliieee.bsky.social.

This was my experience on a recent panel. No change to how proposals were evaluated.

📣Now Free Access: Low internal air space in plants with crassulacean acid metabolism may be an anatomical spandrel Get the Paper:

To update people on the NSF PRFB situation: despite the court challenge and rescinding the original memo, the NSF has continued to comply with the executive order. They have not communicated with us at all and our paychecks are still canceled indefinitely. I know people who cannot pay their rent.

This is shameful and completely unnecessary.

NSF PRFB fellows: talk to your POs and transfer the remaining year’s balance of salary and research funds by 5pm today!! Dm me if you want to join the prfb slack where fellows are sharing info with each other #nsf #nsfprfb

For the record this doesn't appear to be a blanket cancel of all panels (yet).

We are working on a major update to Mesquite, version 4! We welcome any suggestions for features or fixes. A major emphasis will be phylogenomic data. We may not have time for more big features, but please suggest small features for data maintenance or editing that could make your lives easier.

Lots of incredible SEM images of Isoetes megaspores in this preprint by Larsén et al. mapping spore ornamentation and surface structure onto the quillwort phylogeny (not my work, but I'm glad someone's doing it!): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Last week we published a peanut genome that was much more complex than it originally appeared. A 🧵 about 🥜 genomes and what we found ... Find the article as a ‘featured’ genome report in G3: academic.oup.com/g3journal/ar....

NSF makes you say who you got conflicts (coauthored) with. We (really just Jordan Matelsky) just built you a tool for that. Literally one click: bib.experiments.kordinglab.com/nsf-coa

A nice starter pack for society journals in ecology and evolution go.bsky.app/VGQ2eYJ

Shoot apical meristem of my "pin"📌 Mimulus mutant, with plasma membranes of cells fluorescently labeled. #MicroscopyMonday #MeristemMonday #MimulusPropaganda

If you need a distraction on the Election Day, you can read our latest paper out in Molecular Plant - we found that #hornwort #Rubisco is wicked!! Absolutely fun collaboration with Zhen Guo Oh and Laura Gunn at Cornell Plant Bio www.cell.com/molecular-pl...

Join us on Wednesday, November 6, at 11 AM PST for the the next #PolyploidyWebinar! Sylvia Kinosian and Tamsen Dunn will present. The zoom link will be emailed out before the talks - sign up here if you have not signed up before! www.barkerlab.net/polyweb

Check out our new preprint where we explore downstream impacts of CAM on primary metabolism in Yucca. There's more to it than just malate! doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Love this sticker

📢 Calling all prospective grad students: join us Oct 30 for a zoom webinar hosted by UofA EEB in a step towards demystifying the grad school application process. Info below 👇, registration required (register here: bit.ly/eebgradwebinar)

It's my Littorella's first birthday! I mean they're clonal... so maybe more of a one year anniversary? Unclear. Either way, I want cake. 🍰🌱🎉

🚨🧬🌾New pub!🌾🧬🚨 Asplenium (ferns) biogeography with a focus on sub-Saharan African taxa! Link to pub: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Isoetes engelmannii and some very happy fern gametophytes along the banks of the Willimantic River in Coventry, CT

Please repost! The @botsocamerica.bsky.social is hosting a virtual "applying to grad school" Q&A panel on October 3rd from 12-1:30 US eastern! Will be largely focused on applying to botany/plant sci programs, but all are welcome. Head to tinyurl.com/Bot360HowTo to register! 🌾

An entire symposium devoted to my favorite group of plants!? QuillCon-III was just added to the schedule for the 86th Annual Meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists! www.sebiologists.org/asb-2025.htm...

What a pleasant surprise to find that Littorella is apparently the new face of research at the UCONN Botanical Conservatory! Personally, I can't imagine a better choice.

Join us on Wednesday, October 2, at 11AM PDT for the first #PolyploidyWebinar of the season! @shellygaynor.bsky.social and @pairoflogs.bsky.social will lead us off! The zoom link will be emailed out before the talks - sign up here if you have not signed up before! forms.gle/Bp3VUGeP9nAc...

Spent the weekend fine-tuning my work-life balance in the catskills. 10/10, would recommend.

THIS IS THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF AQUARIA!

Our groups' goal is to produce genomes that are useful; this does not always mean 'telomere-to-telomere' assemblies. The hybrid sugarcane genome is a nice example of this. The article is out this week in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

sad news - Duke University decided to dump their herbarium, which has over 800,000 plant specimens, one of the largest among in America, and includes many type specimens of Lady Gaga ferns. What a shame. Please stop Duke admins for making this horrible mistake!!

Our new paper on #lycophyte genomics are out in PNAS! We found lots synteny remained even after 350 million years of divergence!! Weird!! @wickellomics.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

My new paper with Liz Zimmer, @jlandisbotany.bsky.social, and @fernway.bsky.social on polyploid speciation is out in Annals of Botany! In it, we use phased RADseq data and whole chloroplast sequences to probe recurrent origins of Isoetes appalachiana. academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...

As jobs are coming out and folks are applying, here's your regular reminder of lots of examples of successful job apps (mostly research academia but also industry, PUI, gov). And if you've gotten a job recently, please consider contributing! github.com/RILAB/statem...

My Littorella babies are making more Littorella babies!! And I couldn't be a prouder plant parent.

It was a cold ride to campus this morning but also very pretty