Lisa Pokorny

Cycad plants use thermogenesis to warm their reproductive cones. A beetle dusted with pollen and fluorescent dyes lands on the warm cone of a cycad. High concentrations of dye have been deposited on the cone’s hottest regions during previous visits by other labeled beetles. Beetle pollinators use these thermal infrared patterns as a guide to locate host pollen and ovulate cones.

Long before flowers dazzled pollinators with brilliant colors and sweet scents, ancient plants used another feature to signal insects: heat. The findings in Science offer insights into what shaped the earliest eras of plant-animal coevolution.

Read more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/4rVtArQ

New #Thismia description just dropped in @phytokeys.pensoft.net
Please welcome Thismia selangorensis, a beautiful new mitriform species described by Siti Munirah from vicinity of Kuala Lumpur #Malaysia

doi.org/10.3897/phyt...

Turquoise Radiolarians 1/2022 11 X 15 inches [28 x 38 cm] Colored Pencil on Paper #sciart #gawoski #plankton

Convergent genome evolution shaped the emergence of terrestrial animals - Nature Comparisons of 154 genomes from 21 animal phyla and outgroups have been used to reconstruct ancestral adaptation to life on land across 11 distinct terrestrialization events, revealing strong evidence for convergent genomic evolution across the animal kingdom and recurring periods of terrestrial colonization.

Nature research paper: Convergent genome evolution shaped the emergence of terrestrial animals

go.nature.com/4i0i61w

Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions Phylogenomics, the study of evolutionary relationships using genomic data, has revolutionized our understanding of the Tree of Life. As a field, phylogenomics h

If you're interested in understanding discordance in phylogenomic analyses, the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social's special issue 'Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions' is for you!

tinyurl.com/v2eces3s

I'll be sharing a few articles a week until we're through the issue! (1/n)🧪

Thirty novel fungal lineages: formal description based on environmental samples and DNA Molecular analyses of soil and water commonly reveal large proportions of fungal taxa that cannot be assigned to any taxonomic or functional groups. Some of these so-called dark taxa have been encoded...

"This increases the known large-scale fungal phylogenetic diversity by roughly one-third." 🧪💻🧬

Thirty novel fungal lineages: formal description based on environmental samples and DNA mycokeys.pensoft.net/articles.php...

#fungi #sequencing

This paper has been a must! Great collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @yifanzhou.bsky.social, a N&V by a legend of halophilic archaea tinyurl.com/yc3dcv72, and one picture of one of our expeditions to Dallol making the cover of the November issue of @natmicrobiol.nature.com

rdcu.be/eLtCH

We are looking for a PhD student to work on an exciting plastid endosymbiosis in microbial eukaryotes. This position involves sampling, exciting microscopy such as CARDFISH, ExM and FIBSEM, single-cell transcriptomics and more. #protistsonsky 1/2

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time - Nature The most recent common ancestor of the stony coral Scleractinia dates to about 460 million years ago and was probably a solitary, heterotrophic and free-living organism.

New Nature paper!

Vaga et al. (2025) reconstruct a time-calibrated phylogeny of stony (scleractinian) corals, which suggests that some could be resilient to climate change.

Congrats @claudiavaga.bsky.social

Link to paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I cannot believe our work is finally out there and in @journal-evo.bsky.social ! This was an enormous group effort!

We provide an updated estimate of the number of buzz pollinated angiosperm species, genera, and families, look at consequences for diversification, number of transitions, and more!

🌿 ¡Ya está abierta la inscripción al VI Simposio de Botánica Española!

📅 Hasta el 1 de noviembre de 2025
🎓 Gratuito para afiliados SEBOT y de sociedades botánicas afiliadas a SEBOT.
📍 Plazas limitadas
👉 Inscríbete aquí: www.simsebot.org/inscripcioac...

¡Hemos subido a YouTube las seis últimas charlas del ciclo de Cafés Sistemáticos ☕️🍀!

Las temáticas van de la genómica a la taxonomía, pasando por la etnobotánica, la paleobotánica y la biogeografía. ¡Qué las disfrutéis! 🧵

📺 youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Free-to-read link @natgenet.nature.com: rdcu.be/eHzSP
News & Views: "The dawn of bryophyte genomics is here" rdcu.be/eHzS2

Flyer for Botany 2026, themed “Biodiversity at the Boundaries.” The event will be held August 1–5, 2026 in Tucson, Arizona. The circular logo shows a desert landscape with colorful cacti and flowering plants. Large text reads: “Call for symposia, colloquia, and workshop proposals!” The website www.botanyconference.org is listed, along with sponsor logos at the bottom: Botanical Society of America, ASPT, Society of Herbarium Curators, ABLS, IAPT, and American Fern Society.

We’re excited to announce the Call for Symposia, Colloquia, & Workshop Proposals for #Botany2026, Aug. 1–5, 2026 in Tucson, AZ.

Help us explore this year’s theme: Biodiversity at the Boundaries.

There is a hard deadline of October 16 for Symposia and Colloquia proposals.

www.botanyconference.org

The text at the top reads: “APPS Special Issue Call for Papers: Beyond phylogenomics: Innovative applications of target capture data”. The image beneath the title: On the left side of the image is a large circle divided in two halves: the left side of the circle comprises four images of flowers/herbarium specimens and the right side of the circle contains the text “Target Capture.” Five dotted line arrows point from the large circle to five smaller circles on the right. Smaller circles (clockwise from top): (1) “Off Target”, (2) “Biodiversity assessments”, (3) “Population genomics”, (4) “Evo-Devo”, (5) “Species identification”. The text beneath the image reads: “Proposal deadline November 30, 2025”. The Applications in Plant Sciences logo is in the bottom left corner, and a QR code is in the bottom right corner. Image credit: Yannick Woudstra.

SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS

#AppsPlantSci invites proposals for “Beyond #phylogenomics: Innovative applications of target capture data,” led by @emcassey.bsky.social, @erikarmoore11.bsky.social, Mafe Torres Jimenez & ‪@yannickwoudstra.bsky.social‬

Deadline 30 Nov 2025

botany.org/home/publica...

An evolving view of character macroevolution doi.org/10.32942/X28...

The Impact of Sequencing and Genotyping Errors on Bayesian Analysis of Genomic Data under the Multispecies Coalescent Model Abstract. The multispecies coalescent (MSC) model accounts for genealogical fluctuations across the genome and provides a framework for analyzing genomic d

Ji, Kapli, Flouri & @zihengyang.bsky.social assess the impact of genotyping errors in phylogenomic data on Bayesian inference of species trees, suggesting that it is better to sequence a few samples at high depths over many samples at low depths.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf184

#evobio #molbio

GhostParser: A highly scalable phylogenomic approach for the identification of ghost introgression A growing body of empirical research shows that interspecific gene flow is a widespread biological force that shapes evolutionary histories across the Tree of Life. Computational approaches designed t...

My very first post on here.
I am stoked to share lab's latest paper led by @ethantolman.bsky.social. Ethan developed a highly scalable pipeline to differentiate between various gene flow models, including ghost introgression in phylogenomic datasets. Check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

On the role of mutualisms in plant biogeography: consequences for ecology, evolution, and invasion Most plant species world-wide depend on one or more mutualisms – beneficial associations with other species. Evidence is emerging that these biotic mutualisms shape plant biogeography (i.e. distribut....

So excited that my Tansley Insight "On the role of mutualisms in plant biogeography: consequences for ecology, evolution, and invasion" is out today!! @newphyt.bsky.social

ASTER: A Package for Large-scale Phylogenomic Reconstructions. #Phylogenomics #SpeciesTreeInference @molbioevol.bsky.social 🧬 🖥️
academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Check out our paper to explore how the evolutionary history of SELMA supports or challenges various hypotheses on the origin of red complex plastids.

academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Suturing fragmented landscapes: Mosaic hybrid zones in plants may facilitate ecosystem resiliency
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage Genomic and functional analyses reveal that the potato lineage originated from a homoploid interspecific hybridization event between the Tomato and Etuberosum lineages 8–9 million years ago. The alternate inheritance of highly divergent parental alleles drove the origin of tubers and explosive species diversification and niche expansion into the high Andes.

Now online! Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage

Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free-living euryarchaeal-like ancestors - Nature Microbiology Phylogenetic reconstructions with conserved protein markers from the 11 known DPANN phyla reveal their monophyletic placement within the Euryarchaeota.

🎉 Now out “Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free‑living euryarchaeal‑like ancestors” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Short-read metagenomic sequencing cannot recover genomes from many abundant marine prokaryotes due to high strain heterogeneity and platform-inherent GC bias (likely viruses, too), but Nanopore long reads can address this. A results thread on our recent preprint 🧵.

GenomeFISH: genome-based fluorescence in situ hybridisation for strain-level visualisation of microbial communities Abstract. Fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) is a powerful tool for visualising the spatial organisation of microbial communities. However, traditio

Very excited to share the first paper out of my Postdoc @CMR:

GenomeFISH: genome-based fluorescence in situ hybridisation for strain-level visualisation of microbial communities.
@sjmcilroy.bsky.social @jamesvolmer.bsky.social @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/isme...

🧵1/7

The rare microbial biosphere harbors many chemosensitive microorganisms undetectable by regular shotgun metagenomics. We can now explore them using our custom target-capture sequencing approach. Impressive work by
Claudia Sanchis, part of her PhD thesis!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The BEAST X logo - an octopus wrapping its noodley appendages round the letter X.

BEAST X v10.5.0 finally released – you can't just do beta releases forever. github.com/beast-dev/be...

Details and instructions for installing on the BEAST website: beast.community

📢 ESTE VIERNES POR LA TARDE, nuevo Café Sistemático ☕️🌿 con Ana Martínez Becerril (NMNH, Smithsonian Institution):

"El género Elaphoglossum (Dryopteridaceae) como modelo en el estudio integral de los helechos tropicales"

🗓️ Viernes, 4 de julio
⌚️ 17:00 (CEST)
🔗 conecta.csic.es/rooms/mar-dl...