Preprint up now! With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social, we found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity across the altitudinal range of the cutleaf monkeyflower. This experiment was a HUGE personal undertaking. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

There are many days when I think that "less" is the single most powerful bioinformatics tool. Just look at your data.

NSF bio hour - NSF BIO lost 40% of its staff 😑

Some more context on my university’s proposal to discontinue offering a Philosophy degree. scienceforeveryone.science/humanities-a... 🧪

Very happy to see our article comparing the responses of hybrid poplars in 17 common gardens, out now in @newphyt.bsky.social! We estimated reaction norms to predict how warming winters could change where different ancestries are favored. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This just out from @mortonarboretum.bsky.social Rebekah Mohn: reference genome and read mapping method both affect phylogenetic inference & heterozygosity estimates across species. Punchline? Use a closely related but not conspecific reference. Open-access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Climate and hybridization shape #stomatal trait evolution in #Populus 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by Zavala-Paez et al. @WileyPlantSci @michellezavala.bsky.social @jillahamilton.bsky.social

It is official! DR. @michellezavala.bsky.social defended a very impressive dissertation today!! With friends, family, stomata cookies, and Ecuadorian Guinea pigs cheering her along! We understand so much more about the consequences of hybridization to the evolution of physiological traits!! #proudPI

Happy goldenrod season to all who celebrate (and bonus Coreopsis)

Hi #ESA2025! I'll be talking about phenology in a poplar hybrid zone at 3:45 this afternoon in the "Beyond Budburst–Connecting Phenological Transitions Among Tissues and Times in Woody Plants" session. Excited to hear some phenology talks!

I am thrilled to share this paper outlining some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a little while on a simple but powerful approach for predicting risk of inbreeding depression from long runs of homozygosity and non-ROH heterozygosity. 1/n @klohmueller.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Very excited to have our study come out looking at multiple plant mosaic hybrid zones and their implications for hybrids to act as "sutures" of species ranges. We use genomic data to project shifts into future climates and discuss impacts on conservation/management. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Super sad to be missing out on #Botany2025, but Hamilton Lab is represented by @sammymuraguri.bsky.social - be sure to drop by his poster to learn about the genomic architecture of adaptive introgression across repeated contact zones between two sister Poplar species #PopUpPoplars

Winter is great, thunderstorms in spring are great, leaves changing colors in fall is great. Californians insulate themselves from the beauty and changes of the seasons in search of a mythical “perfect weather”. It’s perverse Utopianism and a weakness of the spirit

One week to go!!! So excited to host our colleagues next week in the Happy Valley of Pennsylvania! Over 150 registrants from around the world!! If you’re interested in coming but unable to join in person - email me to learn about virtual options forestgeneticsconference2025.com #forestgenetics2025

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

Our new study out in Molecular Ecology, led by 3 early-career scientists, uses hyb-seq on rangewide field collections to document introgression, species differentiation, and phylogeograhy of bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) & relatives. Great work by a large team over many yrs! doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Happy Pride from California Native Plants!

Super excited for the first manuscript #NSFFunded led by the very talented @alaynamead.bsky.social from our #PopUpPoplar common gardens spanning 17 environments across the US that examined fitness variation and predicted range shifts for hybrids to new environments www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Constantia, Lassen County, CA 🗺39.9228, -120.0034 🧭216° ⛰5604 ft https://ops.alertcalifornia.org/cam-console/1635

One thing I’ve noticed as people move away from the rainbow palette is more use of divergent palettes for sequential data. That’s not *always* a bad idea, but often is. This example inadvertently de-emphasizes states (Colorado) where people hear about climate change more frequently. #dataviz 📊

Excited by new #NSFFunded research from #PopUpPoplars led by @michellezavala.bsky.social that shows the importance of considering cytonuclear interactions to plant function The role of cytonuclear interactions to plant adaptation across a Populus hybrid zone www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The PLANTS program (funded by NSF) at @botsocamerica.bsky.social was a cornerstone of the conference each year, bringing together new-to-science scholars with more experienced mentors. It helped provide community, support, and connection to new scientists. The grant was terminated last week.

happy to see our study on genetic parallelism of reproductive isolation in chickadee hybrid zones out in @evolletters.bsky.social—great work led by Georgy Semenov & Scott Taylor: doi.org/10.1093/evle...

With all the chaos, it was good to help put some trees in the ground today! 🌿💚

We report: the first few days of May happened like a drawn-out sigh, a spill of warmth and light. Spring is now rolling out at full speed, and we remember now how hungry green can be, crawling onto pavements and walls and trees. The sunset seems a weak attempt at stopping it.

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

NEW: We (mostly @noamross.net) launched a website to shine a brighter light on terminated NIH and NSF grants. grant-watch.us It links to our NIH & NSF trackers, grant info submission forms, and other info. We'll also add new analyses soon. Check it out and let us know what else you'd like to see.

My NSF PRFB on the genetics of female polymorphism in hummingbirds was terminated yesterday. I don't have much to say, I'm just sad. We've discovered so much, and could have gone so much further. If anyone else is in the same boat, esp postdocs, please reach out, it would be good to connect.

🧪 Our Terminated NSF Grant Tracker is live 🧪 🔴 114 NSF grants listed so far 🔴 Cancelled grants focused on → Training scientists → Misinformation → AI → Climate change Credit to @noamross.net for all the work to build this & to all PIs who submitted their info. Link: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

🧪 Tip: You have the right to contest a grant termination, even though NSF says you don't. 🧵 On Friday, NSF terminated 402 grants (per Musk's DOGE). The notification letters had one of the most egregious violations of fed regulations I've seen so far in these cases: "not subject to appeal"

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.

1. Six years ago, during the hardest winter of my life, I found myself again. A month later, I found myself again, under a cherry blossom tree. On Trans Day of Visibility this year, we travel through our toughest winter. But we know the promise of spring. Subscribe to support my journalism.

We are hiring a seasonal research intern to work in our Bur Oak ACE experiment at The Morton Arboretum. Our lab is a fun group, the experiment fascinating. Come join us! Application: careers.hireology.com/themortonarb... ... information: www.wbez.org/race-class-c... grist.org/science/to-u...

Stats question: without doing math, does anyone know of a package that does inverse predictions for glmmTMB? E.g., I have a fitted equation and I want to know the value of a predictor that yields a specific value for the response

YES, MORE OF THIS. As I've said before, at the end of the day trans people have rights regardless of what the science says (bc that's not how we decide who gets human rights) but ALSO since there's a determined effort to frame transphobia as science, these statements are critical.

"This administration appears to be not just setting priorities, but enforcing ideological conformity in a way that if your grant is studying something that's not aligned with a particular view of the world, it's just not going to be funded," - @epopppp.bsky.social www.npr.org/sections/sho...

Soil properties – water availability and pH – are strongly associated to the spatial distribution of two hybridizing and sympatric oak species (Quercus spp) at local stand scale. w/@felix-zimmermann.bsky.social, @christian-rellstab.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/eva.70076

Slightly annoying how many of the comments are like, "This is written so broadly it's going to even affect ME over here in chemistry" or whatever. We need to (always) stand together as scientists whether you're the target or the collateral damage.

We report on a long hike: once, we mapped out the trees around here, but it was a different season, and they now all look very different. We did it again, methodically, walked for hours until we had to look for our feet below our knees. The smell of the woods is in our hair.

NEW: We obtained the directions NSF program officers are following to review all grants for compliance with the Trump EOs and the turmoil it has created in an agency mandated to broaden STEM participation. Our story: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NSF froze payments to researchers. State AGs said it was unconstitutional for exec branch to pause congressionally mandated funds. Judge issued restraining order. Payments resumed. But some inconsistencies in what the NSF has said (thread): www.statnews.com/2025/02/02/n...

The dismantling of American Science continues. The Organismal Response to Climate Change grant call has been cancelled. The NSF Director is a disgrace

Really appreciate Jonathan Lambert pointing out that NSF grants are congressionally mandated to weigh how grants broaden participation in science, putting the administration's executive order against DEIA in conflict with, and potentially undermining, congressional legislation

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.

To expand on this, right now ~200 postdoc fellows directly funded by NSF are locked out of their salary &research funds right before the first of the month. No doubt other NSF funded grads &postdocs are affected as well. All requests for funds put in before the freeze are slowly being cancelled

Deleted, reposting to clarify: the NSF statement does not define "DEIA", I haven't used that term in the proposal for my current NSF project. I could guess what it means, but that's not my job. I would need to know what specific activities I'm not allowed to do before I change any plans.

Academic Skyers: I am compiling a list of policies and statements from various universities about how they are handling the "pause" in terms of stopping expenditures (or not). Please respond to this post with your institution and materials. THANK YOU!

NSF PRFB POSTDOCS: Pull the remainder of this funding cycle’s stipend, all remaining research funds, and all remaining travel funds (if you have them). Do it before 5PM today. Per instructions from multiple NSF POs. If you’re not already on the PRFB slack, DM me and I’ll send you an invite