What do elephants and manatees have in common? 🐘🌊 They don’t look much alike, but they’re actually close evolutionary relatives. Sometimes evolutionary relationships can be surprising. Check it out with Dr. Doug Soltis👇 youtube.com/shorts/IFJpV...

The Tree Of Life: Elephants & Manatees

YouTube video by LabX

youtube.com

How are 2.4 billion species on Earth related? 🌳🧬 That’s where the Tree of Life comes in. Check out more with Dr. Doug Soltis! 👇 youtube.com/shorts/Rdliz...

The Tree Of Life: What is it?

YouTube video by LabX

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Anna has some cool results from a pretty bonkers hybrid system - hit her up if you're looking for a speaker in your PAG workshop!

Anna Pardo, Ph.D.@annapardo-phd.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Are you organizing a talk session at PAG 33? I would love to speak about my postdoc work on the genomics of variable facultative CAM photosynthesis in a hybrid Yucca species! Possible workshop topics include: hybrid genomics, abiotic stress, non-model species. Please DM me if you're interested!

Any folks interested in giving a talk at PAG in the 5 interconnected sessions on #Domestication, #AncientDNA, #AnimalComparativeGenomics, #OneHealthHologenomics, #WildlifeGenomics? Please submit an abstract here! Let me know if you have any questions!

Love Dalén@lovedalen.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Interested in giving a talk at the Plant and Animal Genome conference (PAG 33) in San Diego? Together with several colleagues, we are arranging 5 interconnected sessions. To submit an abstract, please fill out this Google Form before Oct 12th, 2025: forms.gle/q7j275Di6umY...

We hope that these open educational resources can be useful to those who work with natural history collections! There are four modules that this paper walks through. All modules are available on QUBES HUB :https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/bceenet/teaching_resources

Siobhan Leachman@siobhanleachman.bsky.social · 12mo ago

So very pleased and proud to announce that our paper "Revealing hidden figures within natural history collections by empowering students with data sleuthing skills" has been published! #Wikidata #Bionomia #HiddenFigures acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Our "Joshua tree is CAM" paper is finally out: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Data collection started back in 2021, when we saw weird results in some RNAseq that made me stop and wonder if Joshua trees, long thought to be C3, were actually...CAM!

Cryptic CAM photosynthesis in Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia, Y. jaegeriana)

Joshua trees are long-lived perennial monocots native to the Mojave Desert in North America. Composed of two species, Yucca brevifolia and Y. jaegeriana (Asparagaceae), Joshua trees are imperiled by...

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Next up, JT Miller - a phd student in the @soltislab.bsky.social talking about occupancy models in the #Botany2025 soltis lab workshop.

And the last of the #Botany2025 with @soltislab.bsky.social

Only three more talks left - first, Elizabeth White, a phd candidate from the @soltislab.bsky.social, presenting on post-enm analysis at the #Botany2025 Soltis lab workshop

Starting back up at the Soltis lab #Botany2025 workshop with postdoc @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social

Sebastian Fernandez, a soltis lab undergrad (who is about to graduate), presenting on ecological niche modeling in the @soltislab.bsky.social #Botany2025 workshop. Check out his poster with @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social tomorrow!

Next up, Tyler Radtke, who just finished his BS, on null models at the #Botany2025 @soltislab.bsky.social workshop! Tyler is part of the PLANTs program this year and has a poster with @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social tomorrow!

Undergrad Sydney Barfus now presenting on data exploration and environmental variables at the @soltislab.bsky.social #Botany2025 workshop! See her poster with @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social tomorrow!

Packed room for the @soltislab.bsky.social #Botany2025 workshop. If you cannot make it, all the resources can be found here: github.com/soltislab/Bo...

Sarah Ellen Strickland, a first year PhD student in @soltislab.bsky.social, now presenting on Georeferencing herbarium records at the #Botany2025 lab workshop!

I had a blast chatting with JoeySantore on Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t! We talked polyploidy, weird desert mustards, monotypic families, and Tiganophyton—a wild new species from Namibia. 🎧 www.podbean.com/ew/dir-en8pq... #Botany #Brassicales #PlantScience

2023 Wikimedia Laureate and WANZ member @siobhanleachman.bsky.social collaborated with @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social from the Florida Museum of Natural History to produce these resources, designed to introduce Wikidata to students, and how it can be used to highlight hidden figures.

I know!! I already miss you!! We will find more projects, I am sure!

Siobhan Leachman@siobhanleachman.bsky.social · 2y ago

That bitter sweet moment of having the last zoom meeting for a project. I've been collaborating on creating a Course Based Undergraduate Experience (CURE) & a scholarly article on the same with @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social & multiple colleagues since the 1st of September 2022.

Soo excited to read this one!! Congrats!!!

Lucrezia Laccetti@lucrezialaccetti.bsky.social · 2y ago

New paper from my PhD thesis finally out! 🚨

Working on laboratory exercises for next semester? Find links to the excellent "Revealing Hidden Figures" @bceenet.bsky.social teaching modules at bionomia.net/help developed by @siobhanleachman.bsky.social @makenziemabryphd.bsky.social and their co-authors.

A new method for trimming alignments in #phylogenomics — PhyIN. It identifies and trims regions with high phylogenetic discord. Able to trim well even on single loci — an advantage for gene tree/species tree studies. #evolbiol #phylogeny 🧪http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.18504 Some backstory... 🧵

I created this stater pack with women in ecology and evolution. If you want to be added you can comment or DM me, but also please suggest the names of those I am missing 🧪🌎🌐 go.bsky.app/8jFH7cS

Two of the many standing stones that encircle the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, one of my favourite places to visit. #photography #blackandwhitephotography #antiquity #standingstones

Hello Bluesky! I’m Paul, a Data Scientist and Computational Geneticist. I love programming, analyzing data, and building software tools – which means I spend a lot of my time battling bugs, but even more time battling my cat’s desire to sit on my keyboard

🥦 Hi! I’m Makenzie, and I study plant biodiversity, focusing on wild relatives of crops in the Brassica family—think cabbages, mustards, and leafy greens. My research explores how these plants adapt to diverse and often challenging environments, revealing insights into resilience and survival. (1/9)

This work was funded by a COVID-19 delayed grant from National Geographic written with Makenzie Mabry & our PhD advisor @jchrispires.bsky.social. Even though we all scattered to the wind following the pandemic, following up on such exciting work has been great! #TeamBrassica

The plants we found were often connected to human habitation. They appeared as weeds in gardens, like Zilla spinosa, or as volunteers in farmers’ fields, where the centuries-old practice of community-coordinated groundwater extraction from oases sustains them and their cousin Brassica oleraceae.

To observe this otherwise hidden photosynthetic phenotype, we brought a Licor 6400 to the desert to measure photosynthetic efficiency. Unfortunately, due to an earlier drought, many plants had already activated their avoidance strategies, so we missed the opportunity to observe and measure them.

Some utilize avoidance strategies, like those that go dormant or completely disappear from the landscape, relying on a resilient seed bed to avoid the harshest conditions. Others have evolved a photosynthetic tolerance strategy hidden from the naked eye, allowing them to persist.

When people think of the Sahara, they rarely consider the plants or realize how close a thorny desert shrub is to their favorite leafy greens. My field partner, Makenzie Mabry, and I traveled to Morocco with Abderrahim Ouarghidi to uncover the secrets of these desert-adapted Brassiceae species.