https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.01.033
[New Paper] @currentbiology.bsky.social presents our population genomics study of the iconic Scaly-foot Snail: 125 genomes from 8 Indian Ocean hot vents! Deep currents drive South→North gene flow, while transform faults act as dispersal barriers.
READ FOR FREE: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mbW73QW8S...
Schematic diagram of L-, M-, and S-morphs in Pontederia crassipes. An L-morph flower has a long style, three short upper anthers, and three mid-length lower anthers; an M-morph flower possesses a mid-length style, short upper anthers, and long lower anthers; and an S-morph flower exhibits a short style, mid-length upper anthers, and long lower anthers.
Origin, tristyly and float formation of water hyacinth
Yunming Zhang, et al.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/XNMQTA...
#PlantScience #WaterHyacinth
🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!
My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.
We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.
#Postdoc #EcoEvo
Pls RT!
First 24 hours of embryonic development in 9 different animal species: (From left to right) Zebrafish, Sea urchin, Black widow spider, Tardigrade, Sea squirt, Comb jelly, Parchment tube worm, Roundworm, Slipper snail. Credit to @tessamontague.bsky.social & Zuzka Vavrušová. #ZebrafishZunday #devbio 🧪
A portrait page with a full restored branch onto the left. It has 6 palm like leaves at the end of one branch, hiding a cone, with a second mature cone below it. On the top right is a male floral organ, which is start shaped, and in the bottom right is a cut-way of the female cone showing its development.
I have another #paleobotany restoration guide for this #FossilFriday. This time, it's Kimuriella densifolia, a whole plant bennettitalean from the Late #Jurassic of Japan.
This plant is composed of three organ taxa: Williamsonia, Zamites, and Weltrichia.
#paleoart #sciart #botany
Just a few days left to submit the ASN student research award (due March 13th)!!!! This is an AWESOME opportunity for students to get some grant writing experience!!! We LOVE reading your grants and giving feedback!!!!!!!!!!! Apply, Apply, Apply!!!!!!
www.amnat.org/announcement...
Recently we're working with SNPs from whole genome assemblies to estimate ARGs. It's a pain to go from alignment files to vcf, keeping track of masked and invariant sites. So we wrote a snakemake/SLURM pipeline. Hope it's useful to others, and don't hesitate to post issues if there are problems!
Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
New paper out from @hoehna.bsky.social Lab, led by the brilliant @bjorntko.bsky.social! We applied the Pesto software (Kopperud & Höhna, 2025) to look at lineage-specific shifts in diversification rate on large, densely-sampled phylogenies across the Tree of Life doi.org/10.1093/evle...
New on the Belowground blog: Visit to the Oxalis collection plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/v...
@russcd.bsky.social ushers in a new era of academic metrics with the core-pivotal author index, which assigns all credit to authors that occupy the exact center of the author list, while non-central peripheral authors receive no credit whatsoever.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag026
#evobio #molbio
1/ ✨ New preprint alert ✨
It is my pleasure to share:
"Stepwise evolution of the developmental and symbiotic functions of DELLA in land plants"
Here we investigated the role of the single GRAS transcription factor DELLA in #MyMarchantia
doi.org/10.64898/202...
#PlantScience
A thread...
Phylogeny and biogeographic distribution of Delphinium sect. Diedropetala.
Geography and admixture shape the genome‐scale phylogeny of North American #Delphinium
📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
by Meek et al.
Photo credit: Delphinium scaposum & Delphinium carolinianum www.wildflower.org/texas; Delphinium viridescens www.burkeherbarium.org
🔬🔬🔬
Many of you have seen @juliazheku.bsky.social Julia's pretty wheat and maize root images. Here is an effort of growing root in the messy soil environment.
(1/5)
I am very excited to share my simultaneous triple staining method for monocot roots. This method is not only faster but also utilizes a smaller volume of stain than traditional methods and minimizes mechanical tissue damage.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Very excited to try this, and ditch my current workflow of:
1. Exit my beloved dark system theme
2. Put on sunglasses whilst opening the blindingly bright FigTree window
3. Do what I have to do
4. Restore dark theme
5. Continue seeing rectangular white afterglow images for the next few hours :P
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)
Directorates to follow
1/10
So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).
I won’t be able (don't want) to implement any new features including ones I really wanted for my own work. Instead of trying to find time to fix/enhance FigTree I decided a more fun procrastination project would be to start it all again from scratch.
The first version of FigTree was released nearly 20 years ago and it is still widely used (including by me). But there are currently 85 issues on the GitHub repo (github.com/rambaut/figt...) and some of them I don’t really like the look of.
Limitations of molecular dating using constant birth-death rate priors in deep time reflected in Brachiopoda evolution www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Our new paper 'A covarion model for phylogenetic estimation using discrete morphological datasets,' is out in SysBio!
We introduce the "covariomorph" model in RevBayes to capture character and lineage specific rates of morphological traits.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/sysb...
Recombination suppression in plant adaptation and speciation nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
How moss makes a spiral of leaves through a rotating asymmetric division of the apical cell meristem--our paper is out @currentbiology.bsky.social today! @soestrauss.bsky.social Richard Smith, Joe Cammarata
www.cell.com/current-biol...
I'm not really big on awards in academia but my students got together and put in a successful nomination packet to give me an outstanding mentor award from my college and it's the most meaningful and humbling recognition I've received in my career. 🥹
Delighted to share our new preprint: "Evolution of moss leaf-like organs through variations in deeply conserved developmental principles."
Led by Ph.D. student Wenye Lin from my lab @irbv.bsky.social ,
in collab. with Yoan Coudert (ENS Lyon) and Richard Smith (JIC).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
This one goes to 12
A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Biological Sciences Directorate. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.
Biological Sciences
2/11
New preprint on a new diversity-dependent biogeographic diversification model using deep learning. Joint work with my amazing advisor @landismj.bsky.social. Details of the paper in the comment section. #evobio
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15
csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...
