Congrats to Zirui and the team on the new Chiloglottis genome - the first Australian orchid genome! Huge step forward in the quest to understand the evolution of sexually deceptive pollination and mycorrhizal niche hyperspecificity 👏👏👏

The Tattooed Professor@schwessinger.bsky.social · 2w ago

Our first orchid genome paper is out "Inter-haplotype inversions and repeat expansion in the sexually deceptive orchid Chiloglottis trapeziformis" academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-.... All let by our super talented master student Zirui Zhang

incredible way to describe Murnane

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 · 2mo ago

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

Incredible

James McInerney@jomcinerney.bsky.social · 3w ago

I’ve seen trees you people wouldn’t believe. Deep branches collapsing off the shoulder of a saturated site, unresolved. I watched long-branch attraction glitter in the dark near the root of the Archaea. All those topologies will be lost in time… like tips in a polytomy.

I just saw a meme that said “get in losers, we’re reclaiming the emdash”. People. PEOPLE. Where are your STANDARDS? It CLEARLY should be “get in, losers — we’re reclaiming the em dash.”

Celeste Linde on the big stage at #icom2026 talking about orchid mycorrhizal fungi. Pure joy.

Very jealous of everyone at #ICOM2026 right now! Sad I can’t be there 😭

Camille Truong@camilletruong.bsky.social · last mo.

ECR day at #ICOM2026 🌱🍄‍🟫🦘 For ECR by ECR for an amazing start of #ICOM2026 Thank you to everyone that attended and made it a great day! @icom2026.bsky.social @mycorrhizaims.bsky.social

By the end of my Arts undergrad, I got good enough at writing to the point that I could smash out a 3000 word essay in the two hours before it was due, armed with nothing but caffeine and cortisol.

Amy Mode Activated 🪷 ᓚᘏᗢ ಇ.@activateamymode.bsky.social · last mo.

Kids today have lost the fine art of bullshitting a 10 page paper from a single Funk & Wagnalls entry or from reading only the CliffsNotes. 🤣

You just gotta let scientists be weird little nerds in their weird little niche interest areas and accept that the benefits to the wider community, and thus to The Economy, will flow naturally from that

1/8 What if the genomic features we associate with fungal pathogens were also used by mutualists? We assembled 41 scale lichen genomes across 11 Peltigera species with 30 chromosome scale and 5 T2T revealing an unexpected genomic toolkit behind lichen symbiosis. doi.org/10.64898/202... #lichen

A chromosome-scale super-pangenome of the lichen genus Peltigera reveals genome architecture and expanded interaction repertoires shared across pathogenic and mutualistic fungi

Fungi engage in associations with other organisms across a continuum from pathogenic to mutualistic lifestyles. Hence, they require a compendium of molecular capacities, including partner recognition,...

doi.org

All I wanted to do was go outside and look at plants and now I’m stuck inside looking at nerds gummy clusters (bonus points if you can guess the protein from the conserved motif)

I hope this is how science remembers me (also congrats on the paper @ethanbeaver.bsky.social 🦋)

Revisions accepted, PhD is done and dusted! 🎉🥳

PhD accepted pending minor revisions! 🎉 more importantly, I’m stoked that my reviewers enjoyed my Moby Dick quotes 🐋

After four years of work, I have finally submitted my PhD thesis. At long last, the low res fireworks gif now plays for me 🎆

like 50% of orchid pollination is horny male insects having their day ruined

Scott “Kostenki 11” Cave@hellabarnes.bsky.social · 3y ago

in nature, nothing is more dangerous than horny

Check out the recent publication in Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics where the authors explore genomic species delimitation in depth. You'll see a number of #sciart figures I created to help explain some of the concepts! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Fungal phylum-level classification update now available! Used "innovative taxonomy" to describe >100 taxa, from species to phylum, based on long reads, characteristic nucleotides and env-samples. mycokeys.pensoft.net/article/1616... #fungi #taxonomy #PacBio #classification #eDNA

I just passed my 50,000th identification on @inaturalist.bsky.social! Identifying is a huge but often ignored part of the #iNaturalist community and dataset so I wanted to share why and how I identify. 1/14 🧪 #ecology #taxonomy #botany #CommunityScience

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go! 400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

Most of us use rDNA for community analyses of AM fungi. Intragenomic variation in rDNA of AM fungi can be pretty huge, depending on the region. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The pitfalls of rDNA‐based AMF identification: a comparative analysis of rDNA and protein‐coding genes

Intragenomic polymorphism of rDNA in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) has been largely overlooked in ecological and taxonomic studies, and the reliability of nuclear rDNA regions for species ident.....

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Thanks to everyone who came along/tuned in to my PhD exit seminar! What a thing to do at the end of almost four years. So close to submitting, just need to tidy up this last chapter and I’m done! PS does anyone need a mycology/botany genomics/systematics postdoc? 👀

A meme for #phylogenetics people.

My final PhD exit seminar is fast approaching! Tune in if you’d like to hear what I’ve been up to the last four years. There’s something for everyone: fungal genomics and species delimitation (38 new Rhizoctonia genomes), orchid phylogenomics and popgen, fungal taxonomy, it’s gonna be fun 🤙

ANU Research School of Biology@biologyanu.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Join us on campus & online on Thursday, 11 Sept 2025 at 3pm for a seminar by Ryan O'Donnell, PhD Candidate from RSB's Linde Group! Details: rb.gy/zij7xp

Join us on campus & online on Thursday, 31 July 2025 at 1pm for a seminar by Dr Darren Wong, Postdoctoral Fellow from the Peakall Group, RSB, ANU. Details: tiny.cc/gizp001

E&E Seminar Series: A symphony of colour and scents: Complex anthocyanin and terpene synthase mechanisms underpin the evolution of species-rich Australian orchids

Many flowering plants have evolved diverse strategies to communicate with and attract animal pollinators. We have discovered exciting new evidence for the role of anthocyanins and terpenes in the evol...

tiny.cc

Thanks @westerdijkinst.bsky.social !

The Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute@westerdijkinst.bsky.social · last yr.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 🚨 What happened to Rhizoctonia and its Thanatephorus sexual morph? In this paper, Rhizoctonia and allied genera are reviewed, and 32 new combinations are proposed in Rhizoctonia 🔗 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞: https://doi.org/10.3114/persoonia.2025.54.09 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

Trevor A. Branch@trevorabranch.bsky.social · last yr.

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research. about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

so cool! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... Nice work @martinsteinegger.bsky.social et al :)

Unicore Enables Scalable and Accurate Phylogenetic Reconstruction with Structural Core Genes

Abstract. The analysis of single-copy core genes, common to most members of a clade, is important for key tasks in biology including phylogenetic reconstru

academic.oup.com

At long last, our manuscript ‘Rise up, Rhizoctonia: moving to one fungus, one name in the Ceratobasidiaceae’ has finally been published in Persoonia 🎉 Here we resolve several longstanding taxonomic issues within Ceratobasidiaceae and present a unified Rhizoctonia www.persoonia.org/images/Volum...