Diamonds form under geological pressure. Librarians form under book compactor pressure. Taxonomists form under specimen compactor pressure.

alix e. harrow@alixeharrow.bsky.social · 24h ago

i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

Proof of the 40-year old Bandelt-Dress conjecture on the maximum quartet distance between phylogenetic trees (and an interesting connection to independence testing). arxiv.org/abs/2608.03542

The maximum quartet distance between phylogenetic trees

The quartet distance counts the four-leaf subsets on which two binary phylogenetic trees display different topologies. We prove that its maximum over trees on $n$ leaves is $(2/3+o(1))\binom{n}{4}$, r...

arxiv.org

'You'll choke too' - an aerial embroidery landscape inspired by all the wildfires happening right now... I'm upset every time I smell smoke outside and somehow we have people starting them maliciously too! But we all breathe the same air so they'll choke too (1/2 - see thread for close-ups)

Well deserved award for @katelaskowski.bsky.social ! I am honored to have her as a mentor at UC Davis and to learn from her what it means to produce rigorous and just science 🥳

Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com · yesterday

The Center for Scientific Integrity is proud to announce the inaugural winners of the 2026 Ctrl-Z Award. Named for the universal keyboard shortcut for “undo,” the Ctrl-Z Award this year honors @cetaceanneeded.bsky.social and @katelaskowski.bsky.social for choosing transparency over reputation.

Maybe late to the game, but if you have not read the 75th Anniversary special series of @systbiol.bsky.social you should. So many good ideas and history there academic.oup.com/sysbio/pages... #systematicbiology

Systematic Biology's 75th Anniversary

In celebration of Systematic Biology's 75th anniversary, the 2026 volume features a special series of discussions and essays commissioned by the Society’s Legac

academic.oup.com

I had no idea mammals had teeth like this - seen similar in lots of algae feeding fishes

Claudia Astorino@claudistics.bsky.social · yesterday

it’s #ToothyTuesday! some of my fav teeth are colugo lower incisors. these teeth are pectinate or “fan-like,” exhibiting many long, thin projections used for grooming! while colugos are sometimes called flying lemurs, they’re not actual lemurs: lemurs = primates, and colugos = dermopterans!

Something that keeps happening: I find an amazing article and look up the author who conducted the analyses (distinct from the author who was PI or senior author, BTW), and the vast majority of the time, said author is precariously employed at the institution listed on the publication.

🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.

Morning #Botany2026 - come check out a whole set of talks from the lab this morning in Ecophys! Tropical plants, temperate friends, epiphytes, and aquatics - we have it all. Our Belonging in Botany: fostering resiliency discussion is happening from 11-12 today, too. See you there! #dampmuffins

New: In about 10 minutes the Senate should start an initial vote on a continuing resolution. The CR contains a provision that would temporarily (but completely) block OMB's proposal to overhaul federal grants. Our story on that Senate measure and some of the pushback which lead to it:

Controversial White House plan to overhaul US science funding faces Senate opposition

Proposal to put political appointees in charge of research grants could be temporarily halted if lawmakers’ efforts are successful.

nature.com

Who at #botany2026 is thinking about which talks to see tomorrow? Maybe I humbly recommend our talk on Physalis phylogenomics where we ask the question, why are there so many tomatillo species 50 million years after a (famous to Solanologists) bottleneck? Tomorrow 1:30pm in San Ignacio!

Just your regular reminder that: 1) Almost everyone has an underlying health issue if you look hard enough 2) People with underlying health issues don't deserve to die for eating lettuce 3) We should be strengthening, not weakening our regulatory processes. And properly funding them.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 2d ago

Breaking News: Two deaths in Michigan have been linked to cyclospora. Both people who had the parasite also had underlying health issues.

Not a big fan of the "sick, elderly and/or disabled people don't count" discourse that appears to follow public health disasters these days.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 2d ago

Breaking News: Two deaths in Michigan have been linked to cyclospora. Both people who had the parasite also had underlying health issues.

Major #Botany2026 FOMO, but the drive MA->OR starts this week. So, sharing from afar: I’m recruiting grad students for my new lab at OSU! Info: www.mckenzie-lab.org . We're going to have FUN with systematics, speciation genomics, methods, natural history, and more in North Am angiosperms. Reach out!

The shade of it all!

Hey. You. Presenter at #Botany2026. Let's use the mic this week, yes?! Yes!

Are you passionate about #naturalhistory #collections? Apply for our open position for the Herbarium Collections Manager @utkherbarium.bsky.social. We will start evaluating applications on Aug 17, so get your application in now. #Botany2026 #herbarium #jobs

Excited to see everyone this week at #Botany2026 ! Check out what our lab has been working on 🌵 :

NSF: Pilot of a new four-year Ph.D. model ($47 million federal funding + $ from universities & private industry) Pilot recommended in "Science: A New Golden Age, a report to the president released last week by WH Office of Sci. & Tech. Policy Director Michael Kratsios." www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-par...

NSF partners with universities and industry on pilot initiative for four-year Ph.D. programs with real-world research placements

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a $47 million investment over five years, along with additional financial commitments from nearly three dozen universities and private industry...

nsf.gov

Looks like the @soltislab.bsky.social #Botany2026 workshop is going well! This would have been my 8th time helping teach it. If you are missing it, you can find all the material here: soltislab.github.io/BotanyENMWor...

NSF is definitely back to awarding grants at a decent clip, but total award $ still below historic norms. bomeara.github.io/rnsf/index.h... #AcademicSky 🧪

Folks at #AOS2026: See my coadvised student Renata Beco's talk "Do female ornaments influence territorial responses in a socially monogamous suboscine bird (Myrmoderus loricatus)?" Room 163, 3:30 pm, Thurs Aug 6 [photo by Ciro Albano / Brazil Birding Experts, macaulaylibrary.org/asset/179111...]

And 9% are postdocs. That's 96 amazing peeps at #Botany2026 who could turn up for Monday's Postdocs in Botany affinity group social in the Arizona Grand Ballroom. #plantpeopleFTW

Chris Martine | Plant People FTW@martinebotany.bsky.social · 4d ago

Current numbers for #Botany2026! 1079 registered attendees (43% are students) 825 presentations 24 countries repped #plantpeopleFTW

Current numbers for #Botany2026! 1079 registered attendees (43% are students) 825 presentations 24 countries repped #plantpeopleFTW

🧵To seniors: - move away from bean-counting (easy, right?). E.g., when evaluating CVs or grants or applicants, ask for the top 3 pubs, with a paragraph explaining why these are important. Hiring on a CV of 50 pubs was always sort of meaningless, now it's become meaningless-er (!) and gameable. 2/

Excited to share some positive updates: I successfully defended my dissertation, and have accepted a postdoctoral position starting this fall at University of Rochester. I'll be working with Mark Hibbins (@rejectresubmit.bsky.social). A big thank you to everyone who has helped me on this journey!

To the reviewer and AE who were *adamant* that we should delete these watercolors: FYI im getting loads of compliments on them. Everyone says we need more art like that in peer-reviewed pubs.

Rafael Marcondes@rafamarcondes.bsky.social · last mo.

Also check out these GORGEOUS watercolors by Rice biology/art student Caroline Pollan!

EEB Mentor Match is now open! But apps due soon (8/17). Mentees: get help applying for grad school or fellowships in ecology & evolution. Mentors: senior grads, post-docs, or faculty in these fields willing to give advice Org by Diversity Cmte of @asn-amnat.bsky.social Pls share! eebmentormatch.com

EEB Mentor Match

Visit the post for more.

eebmentormatch.com

Though I will not make it to #Botany2026, Doug Soltis and Jacob Landis will tag-team my talk on Monday at 2:15 pm in Population Genomics (San Ignacio)!

Shelly Gaynor@shellygaynor.bsky.social · 5d ago

I was really excited to attend #Botany2026, but sadly my cat is very sick and I decided I couldn't leave her right now. I believe @jlandisbotany.bsky.social will be giving my talk. And luckily the @soltislab.bsky.social can do the workshop without me. Really sad to miss this year!

Our paper (also, my first first-author paper) is now available in MEE early view! In this study, we introduced a state-dependent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model we implemented in RevBayes to test adaptive hypotheses in macroevolution. (1/3) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An efficient Bayesian phylogenetic approach for joint inference of continuous and discrete trait evolution under a state‐dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model

Macroevolutionary adaptation of a continuous trait to different discrete states across species can be modelled using a phylogenetic state-dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Existing infere...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com