This case - of a former US military guy turned prison guard turned hired brawn for Chinese spies - is fascinatingly bizarre. Also among his targets was a sculpture of Xi Jinping as a coronavirus particle in the middle of the California desert, as I chronicle in my book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom.

⏰ Two weeks left to submit a proposal to our cross-journal Special Feature! ⏰ If you want to further understanding of how climate change affects plant–antagonist interactions, find out more 👇

Aside from Florida, nearly the entire contiguous U.S. has experienced earlier than average first plant blooms in 2026. Earlier springs can cause longer allergy seasons, accelerate wildfire risk, increase pests/mosquitoes, and lead to less reliable snow-fed water. Map: www.usanpn.org/data/maps/sp...

My super department @warwicklifesci.bsky.social is hiring 6 assistant profs in the wake of recent retirements. We're looking for people in microbiology/infection, cellular disease / immunity; environmental biology; and plant/crop science. #MicroSky warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...

You have a little under two weeks to apply for BSA's @botsocamerica.bsky.social Impact Award! Deadline 5/1. Reach out with questions or with nominations, and apply! 💚

Botanist/plant ecologist E. Lucy Braun is one of the most influential ecologists in North American history. + First woman President, Ecological Society of America, 1950 + Helped establish plant ecology as a rigorous academic discipline She was born #OTD in 1889. #WomenInSTEM #conservation #ecosky

Well, I didn't expect to see this on camera. Western fence lizard catches a bee and eats it. The lizards are insectivores that feed on a variety of invertebrates, including bees, wasps, beetles, flies, caterpillars, and ants. This is a 1st for the water dish! ❤️🦎❤️

👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium: Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology Pls RT to help get the word out!

The Senate voted on Thursday to allow mining upstream from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the largest and most visited expanses of federally protected lakes and forests in the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/c...

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's #FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits Stable, sustained support can transform your career: Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

Come work with us!

WANTED: Lead Collections Manager. Smithsonian NMNH Botany is looking for a Supervisory Museum Specialist to manage the United States National Herbarium and a top-notch collections team. For more information, visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications due in two weeks (1 May 2026).

Texas' only licensed Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu legal interpreter is now languishing in a Raymondville detention center. She’s lived in America for 35 years: www.texasobserver.org/immigration-...

Scientists just discovered 5.6 million bees under a New York cemetery www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

🚨Job Alert!🚨 Please share widely! We are hiring *two* postdocs (one ASAP, one Oct '26) using models and data to identify pathways involving the gut-brain axis that link the infant microbiome with neurodevelopment and Autism Spectrum Disorder. 1st review date: April 24! recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF03089

😱 Super excited to be named as a Guggenheim Fellow!! 😱

My big takeaway from reporting this story is that it's not JUST about the Forest Service. The closure of these stations threatens to upend a delicate system of mutually beneficial collaboration and resource sharing, and the impacts will ripple out far beyond the Forest Service itself.

I still can’t get over how we lost this brilliant researcher doing such impactful anti-racist and anti-sexist work in biology because of anti-DEI BS. Please share this article widely! www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500). I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

Bri Barbu and I, at the time, had just written "The beginner's guide to a career in science writing," where we sought to help other students go from zero to where we were. In 2026, the guide is sorely outdated, so we gave it a refresh for today's science writing landscape:

Neighborhood kitty Buster living The Life™ in our flower meadow!

This year's #kakapo breeding season has been the biggest on record: - 256 eggs (252 in 2019) - 148 fertile eggs (116 in 2019) - 105 eggs hatched (86 in 2019). It'll be 2+ months until we know how many chicks will fledge (73 in 2019). There are currently 95 alive. #conservation #kakapo2026 #birds

Calling all geologists! 🥾⛏️ The Utah Geological Survey is hiring a Geologic Mapper. If you love fieldwork, creating detailed maps, and want to work in a geological wonderland, this is for you! Apply here: utdgohcm.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... 🧵 1/6

Ecological and genomic variation in ectomycorrhizal fungal exploration types Mansfield, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @tommansfield.bsky.social @Anthomycota.bsky.social #PlantScience

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Just updated my HHMI Gilliam Fellowship application guide for the 2026 cycle. Big changes this year: international PhD students and MD-PhDs can now apply, and there's a new postdoc pathway extending HHMI support up to 7 years total. www.yaelcourtney.com/resources-an...

The United States National Herbarium is seeking a Lead Collections Manager! For complete requirements and application procedures, please visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications and all supporting documentation must be received online by 1 May 2026.

Oh thank goodness

Despite all the bad right now, I got a personal dose of good today: I was selected as a Fulbright Scholar and will be spending 5 months in Colombia 🇨🇴 between September 2026 and August 2028!!

Same. So heart breaking.

Excuse me while I go scream for a little bit

This was one of the few existing ways to find long term research. That is horrible and a huge loss to all of science. I hope other organizations and university will step up to help this important research.

This is destruction of oir public wealth.

The LTER program specifically supports experiments and monitoring to study processes that play out over much longer time-frames than a typical three-to-five-year NSF grant. It's basic infrastructure for how we understand biodiversity... and how biodiversity responds to long-term environmental change

Oh no. NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program shuttered. This one leaves me winded. A good story from 2025 by @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social offers insight into what we are losing: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Nooooo! I owe so much of my career to the LTER program. So much foundational ecological knowledge is built on findings from LTER sites and long term data only possible due to NSF funding. This is devastating 😭

"Cost-cutting was another incentive, as USFS had been running operational deficits in recent years, in part because of the cost of fighting wildfires." So the solution is to pretend wildfires don't exist!??? WTF?

Day 1: Part-to-Whole Visualizing Teddy's magical expansion from a very average 45 pound dog into an immovable dire wolf once he hits the bed. Watercolor & ink. #30DayChartChallenge

Day 4 #30DayChartChallenge: Slope A slope chart about our newest family member, Nazgûl (aka The Ghoul, The Witch King, Ghoulish, Little Wraith, etc.). Watercolor & ink.

My UNLV biology prof Dr James Deacon not only testified in defense of the 'tiny fish" in the 70s during a legal fight over groundwater pumping, he also played a major role in securing water rights for Death Valley and Zion national parks and aided in the establishment of Ash Meadows. He'd be pissed🌎

Guzmania! I adore bromeliads.

Hearing from folks! I know the FS has barred employees from talking to the press. I can keep your name and identifying details out of my story—won't publish anything without explicit ok. Seems equally important I talk to researchers working with the FS, who can talk about what we stand to lose...

Pasqueflowers shining in the sunlight today 🌿

The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states under a reorganization plan announced this week, threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests.

So exciting to finally get to visit Archbold Biological Station and the Florida Scrub!

Are you looking for a Post-doc related to biodiversity? We might have just the role for you! @anthropocenebio.bsky.social are curently advertising 10 (yes!) post-docs covering natural & social science of biodivesity. Come work with us & share with anyone appropriate! sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/l...

!! Wow, NPR article highlighting botanist @naomibot.bsky.social !!

Grad students & postdocs: how is funding uncertainty affecting you right now? SSE's GSAC is collecting anonymous input to inform advocacy and conversations at Evolution. Share your perspective by May 1, 2026 and pls RT!

The Orange Cat Brain Atlas is here. 🧠🐈 Today, we published the first comprehensive cellular map of the orange cat brain. The new atlas reveals a single, specialized neuron responsible for behaviors like staring at walls, knocking objects off tables, and the 3am "zoomies."