Why is this horrible for Universities? Just about everyone who isn't a citizen or green card holder already who's hired for a tenure track faculty position is hired through an H1B and then, after 3-5 years, applies for a green card. This is literally "No more foreign professors can be hired"

Cool... a global focus on three core traits of ectotherms: metabolic rate, development time and fecundity. ShareTrait: Towards interoperable and reusable individual trait-based data in ectotherms #OpenTraits #FunctionalTraits besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... 🧪🌐

New paper 🚨 with @birdmapper.bsky.social! We mapped various diversity metrics for the colossal avifauna of Colombia! Species and functional richness are tightly linked but range-restricted endemics do not capture functional diversity well conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In Tucson!

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Functional traits drive speciation in tropical palms through complex interactions between genome size, adaptation and allometry https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.07.673473v1

The EPA move follows news the administration wants to scrap the satellites that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If you can't measure it and don't know where it's coming from, it becomes very difficult to reduce or eliminate it (or hold anybody accountable for damages). Gift link.

One in six species on Earth experienced extraordinarily high temperatures across more than 25% of their range in 2024--the hottest year on record. For most, this was the second year of extreme heat, likely compounding risks. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hydrology Paper of the Day @bioinv.bsky.social on Mediterranean riparian forests in Guadalajara (Spain) and how the water table in a floodplain ecosystem responds to aridity: naturalized non-native species extract water from a greater depth in the soil indicated by stable isotopes and models.

📢 @ecologybasel.bsky.social at @unibas.ch is hiring a 5-yr Postdoc (70–90%) for an ERC project on global plant invasions in mountain ecosystems! 🌍🌱 Join fieldwork in the Alps + global #macroecology research! See this job + more on the MRI website ➡️ buff.ly/PWTUag1 #OurChangingMountains

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ (🧵 1/5) Distal to proximal: a continuum of drivers shaping tree growth and carbon partitioning doi.org/10.1111/nph....

♻️Some unique anatomical scaling relationships among genera in the grass subfamily Pooideae by Daniel B Spitzer and co-authors Full #openaccess 👉 doi.org/10.1093/aobp... #PlantScience

Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.

We need more provocative papers like this …

High tree diversity exposed to unprecedented macroclimatic conditions even under minimal an…... by @bjenquist.bsky.social @jcsvenning.bsky.social published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences using @gbif.org mediated data: #CiteTheDOI: ✅ https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420059122

🌍 The International Biogeography Society’s 12th Biennial Conference — TIBS Aarhus 2026 — will take place Jan 6–10 in Aarhus, Denmark: conferences.au.dk/tibs-aarhus-... 🐘🍃🌴We're looking forward to hosting it! #Biogeography is central to understanding the #biosphere & is more important than ever!♨️

We live in the non-uniformitarian world of post-Pleistocene mammalian turnover: "findings demonstrate that human-driven niche modification, beyond earlier megafaunal extinctions, profoundly reshaped mammal communities on a global scale." doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Resharing my post from earlier this week, just in case you're working on your syllabus and want to give a think about how you're going to be dealing with AI with assignments. scienceforeveryone.science/how-i-am-thi... 🧪

Trump's new executive order "looks like an explicit attempt to destroy peer review for federal science grants,” a physicist in Texas tells @dangaristo.bsky.social. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

E.P.A. to Stop Updating Popular Database After Lead Scientist Criticized Trump www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/c...

🌍 Green gains, blue losses From 2003–2021, plants on land grew more, but ocean productivity declined, likely due to climate warming. Land is boosting Earth’s carbon uptake, but oceans are showing signs of stress. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #ClimateCrisis #SciComm 🧪

“In his second administration, President Donald Trump is not just approaching climate science with skepticism. Instead, his administration is moving to destroy the methods by which his or any future administration can respond to climate change.“

NSF and NIH cut off almost 300 grants to UCLA. Story by @dangaristo.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

Applications are open for SFI's 2026 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships If you’ve recently earned a Ph.D. in any scientific field and want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research, consider applying. Deadline: October 1, 2025 Apply here: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

Where did we get the data? Where can you find them? 150 scientists contributed 1000s tree-ring data through Tropical Tree-Ring Network. This network unites tree-ring scientists & data. To fill tropical data gap all data are uploaded to International Tree-ring Databank. tropicaltreeringnetwork.org

How do tropical #trees deal with droughts? The answer is published today in @science.org Our pantropical #treering analysis revealed 2.5% growth reduction during #drought years. Yet, growth declined by >10% in 1/4 of 500 study sites, and in hotter & drier regions. doi.org/10.1126/scie... 🌍🍁🌐 (1/4)

Yes, many tropical trees have annual rings! Great to contribute to this global synthesis led by @pieterzuidema.bsky.social, indicating stronger droughts w climate change may shift observed more resilient responses toward more widespread decreases in productivity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪🌾🌐

🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average. 📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Suspect that the repeated convergent evolution of the tree growth habit 🌴🌲🌳across the land plants may even exceed these numbers 🌾🧪

ONE Lectureship in genomics + TWO in ecology are advertised right now in my 'hood. Applications close 7th August. It'd be brilliant to have these filled with plant people. #PlantSciJobs #MonashBiol #plantecology #plantgenomics 🪴🧪🌱🌿🌾 This links to both : www.ecolsoc.org.au/opportunitie...

#Scaling In #Branch Thickness And The #Fractal #Aesthetic Of #Trees [In #Art From #DaVinci To #Mondrian] - alturl.com/9tfjm - #spatial #maths #mathematics #painting #representation #α #biology #artwork #radiusscalingexponent #branches #branching #nature #naturalpatterns #proportions #physiology

New in #EcologyLetters: How does extinction time scale with habitat size? An experiment with #Daphnia found strong support for power law—not exponential—scaling. A rare test of a big theoretical question. Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #Ecology #Extinction #Scaling #Microcosms

Congratulations Dr Middleton. I'm very proud of bae. There were many hurdles during her PhD, but she beat them all. @saralilplants.bsky.social

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

#FunctionalTraits 🧪🌐

“While larger and reasoning-enabled models achieve higher accuracy, up to 84.9%, they also incur substantially higher emissions… abstract domains such as Abstract Algebra consistently demand more computation and yield lower accuracy” www.frontiersin.org/journals/com... 🧪

People’s trust in experts is decreasing. Why? — Steven Hales offers a perfect-if-true answer: because the people don’t know even know what expertise is open.substack.com/pub/hilarius... #expertise #PhilSky #PhilSci

Looking up a plant name a while back led me to Sarah Plummer Lemmon. How many people have multiple plants AND a mountain named in their honor? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Pl...

Employees’ protests against Trump science policies spread to NSF | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Trying to develop predictive theory for how biology works in the ocean? Interested in unifying traits? Keen to hang out in a beautiful place with amazing people? Consider joining us in a couple of weeks at the 7th #TraitBasedApproaches workshop in Asilomar! carnegiescience.edu/seventh-trai...

“…these results enhance our understanding of the role of metabolic rate through time and during climate-driven extinctions. When standardized by mass, metabolic rate may represent a useful metric …” www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 🧪🌐

“The extent to which current and future generations will experience a hotter and different world depends on choices now and in the near-term” www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/s...

The first paper from my postdoc is finally out! In collaboration with @kaitlyngaynor.bsky.social and Amy Angert, we outline how behavioral plasticity influences animal species’ distributions and can improve our understanding of range shifts under climate change! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌐🧪

New paper out in Global Change Biology 🤩 doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... We built the first soil carbon model that includes microbial eco-evolution using game theory — and found that adaptation could nearly double global soil carbon loss by 2100. Here is how👇(1/7)

“I don’t know if we’re living in climate denial anymore,” said one expert. “We have this new front of denial by erasure.” @grist.org's Kate Yoder reports: grist.org/language/tru...

🌡️ 🌳 New article in @aobp.bsky.social addresing how heat waves affect temperate forest trees, revealing that many species already show signs of stress under current conditions. Full #openaccess 👉 doi.org/pwhx #PlantScience

🔥ADVANCE ACCESS🔥: Plants originating from more extreme biomes have improved leaf thermoregulation doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

I talked to a NOAA colleague yesterday who told me that 75% of the federal employees of his division have left and he’s worried about their ability to get work done even if Congress funds NOAA at some level. The devastation to science will be felt for generations.

the current rate of extinction, as estimated by ourselves and others, whom we cited, and across diverse major taxa, we may well be headed in the direction of a new mass extinction event www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... 🌐🧪