@tropicalbotany
Botanist. Evolutionary biologist. Associate Professor and Herbarium Director, LSU. Passionate about plants, inclusive mentoring, and puzzles. I don't know what I'm doing here. https://www.lagolab.net
Okay, we’re done here. That’s absolutely not a good faith extension of this conversation.
And for what it’s worth, I have used Merlin on dog walks— probably while picking up dog poop. There can be nature in then quotidian!
Justice for beginners who may only be interested in the names attached to the noise (me)!!
You’re made a broad statement about the utility of Merlin, and I’m sensing that your specific criticism is that my wildlife ecologists use it as a crutch? My friend, wildlife ecologists are not beginners. And I gather from social media that identifying as a birder alone results in gatekeeping 😕.
And now I can match the robot sound in my backyard to a cardinal- a bird that I have no problem identifying by sight???
I don’t need to know field marks. I am a botanist who works in Latin America. But I know Louisiana bird calls because of Merlin. My colleagues who teach field ornithology aren’t about to come over while I have Saturday morning coffee and tell me what bird is yelling at me, are they?
Access and ease are wonderful and effective gateways into learning more about nature, condescension is not.
I don’t question the usefulness of iNat/Seek for learning plants. If you were in my class, I’d want you to know *why*,but if you’re my neighbor who learned the yellow flower in their yard is goldenrod thanks to an app, awesome! I can tell you more about it now, and provide resources to dig deeper.
But even if the answer was that it was my gateway into going into nature— that would be awesome!! That would count!! As someone who teaches undergrads, I can confirm that most Gen Z/alpha in my sphere don’t spend much or any time in nature.
It allows me know when I hear specific call, and then reinforces learning because I can predict as I continue to listen, and then relearn every spring. This already-always-outside, insect-curious, PhD trained field botanist in a dept full of ornithologists knows backyard birdcalls thanks to Merlin!
I’ll try it on a full monitor later! I don’t notice differences across colors groups but saw others discussing that on another thread. I did notice that when the deltaE value was 0.002, I had reached my limits but not at the next higher level where sometimes I could and sometimes not distinguish.
Probably! I expect my aging, six year old iPhone mini 12 isn’t giving me much of a leg up, though I am constantly burning out my retinas with full screen brightness.
It helps beginners (me)!
Could the reason I love colors 🌈 so much be because I can perceive differences between them better than the average person??
What's My JND? 0.0037
Can you beat it? www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...
I’m at the mid-career slump.
I’m at the national research funding & infrastructure crisis.
I’m at the university budget cuts.
I’m at the nonsensical war.
I’m at the demolition of our democracy.
I’m at the combination mid-career-slump-national-research-funding-&-infrastructure-crisis-university-budge
My lord is there a lot of adulting in my life right now. Entirely too much. Just responsibility from all directions. Is it possible that I'm the only adult out there??
10 days remaining to submit your Mini-ARTS award! These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics. Up to $4,000 is available per award. For guidelines and to submit your application, see our website
www.systbio.org/mini-arts-aw...
Applications now open for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! These provide evolutionary biology research funds for early and advanced Master’s and PhD students. Proposals due May 18.
www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...
The U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office.
A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies. Read more: https://scim.ag/4boPkq8
Awesome- enjoy Cape Town! It was a really fun city to vacation in.
I got to see ‘em in Boulders Beach near Cape Town last year, and I love the little weirdos so much. They’re so clumsy on land- like a bullet in water, but slipping on discarded banana peels in all directions on land.
I hope to see Welwitchia one day too!
“These days, if you’re not a mad scientist, you’re not paying attention.”
@standupforscience.bsky.social
Love it! Makes me miss my hometown.
This local Wolfdog joined an Olympic ski event and triggered the finish-line camera. This is Nazgul. He snuck into a cross-country skiing sprint this morning and raced the homestretch with some competitors before being escorted home. 14/10 someone get him a medal
Love this lab, love this PI, love this time of year in Louisiana 💜💚💛.
We should talk more about the graduate admissions crisis that's taking shape in the US.
Talking to colleagues across universities, many graduate programs are slashing admission numbers and reducing class sizes substantially for the upcoming academic year.
This is shortsighted
How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications.
My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/
academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
Can't excuse the "tator" spelling unless they were invoking gators, though. That has always bothered me as well!
Though no longer made here, Zapp's is very ~Louisiana~, and those chips are found everywhere here! I bet torula yeast makes 'em a hint meaty, and the spices are typical crawfish boil spices. Also, no flashing needed to get beads at Mardi Gras, despite popular imagery!
Yum! BioGrads does an international lunch potluck event each year that looks similar. So many new foods to try!
Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
