Erika R Moore-Pollard

World Flora Online seeks your input for plant ID tools via a 10-minute survey by Nov 15, 2025. Share with peers! Participate here: [WFO Survey](https://www.worldfloraonline.org/survey).

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!

Super excited about this review/new data preprint on aquatic plant photosynthetic methods - turns out its *hard* to measure stuff underwater! Led by awesome grad in the lab @ellliieee.bsky.social with postdoc @wickellomics.bsky.social and some brilliant people at LiCor! 💧🌿

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

Enjoy the view! This is clearly the best ever science experience I have had emerging from fruitful collaboration with @ucalgary.bsky.social @tengzhanguh.bsky.social @helsinki.fi and funded by the Research Council of Finland

I am Erika Moore-Pollard, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Connecticut. My current research focuses on photosynthetic metabolism and functional trait tradeoffs in Bromeliaceae. I earned my PhD at the University of Memphis, where I investigated the phylogenomics, genomics, and systematics of Asteraceae, with a particular focus on the complex genus Packera. My overall research goal is to uncover the molecular drivers of plant diversification, with an emphasis on how polyploidy, hybridization, and convergent evolution shape trait innovation and ecological success across angiosperms.

Dr. Erika Moore-Pollard is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Connecticut whose research focuses on photosynthetic metabolism and functional trait tradeoffs in Bromeliaceae. @erikarmoore11.bsky.social

Announcing the 2025 Future Faculty Academy cohort! Congratulations to Dr. Arpita Yadav, Dr. Erika Moore-Pollard, Dr. Kirk Amundson, and Dr. Rajnandani Kashyap. See thread for their bios!

The text at the top reads: “APPS Special Issue Call for Papers: Beyond phylogenomics: Innovative applications of target capture data”. The image beneath the title: On the left side of the image is a large circle divided in two halves: the left side of the circle comprises four images of flowers/herbarium specimens and the right side of the circle contains the text “Target Capture.” Five dotted line arrows point from the large circle to five smaller circles on the right. Smaller circles (clockwise from top): (1) “Off Target”, (2) “Biodiversity assessments”, (3) “Population genomics”, (4) “Evo-Devo”, (5) “Species identification”. The text beneath the image reads: “Proposal deadline November 30, 2025”. The Applications in Plant Sciences logo is in the bottom left corner, and a QR code is in the bottom right corner. Image credit: Yannick Woudstra.

#AppsPlantSci is planning a special issue highlighting innovative uses of target-enrichment sequence data, and we're seeking proposals!

More info here: botany.org/home/publica...

Deadline 30 Nov 2025‪‬

@emcassey.bsky.social @erikarmoore11.bsky.social @yannickwoudstra.bsky.social #genomics

The cover image shows Odontochilus aff. fissus, which is found on Hachijo Island in the Izu Archipelago. The plant exhibits reddish, scale-like leaves and coralloid rhizomes—traits linked to high fungal dependence. This genetically distinct orchid maintains rhizoctonia associations while approaching full mycoheterotrophy. The image here shows its unusual morphology, which offers insights into the evolutionary trajectory of rhizoctonia-associated orchids with elevated heterotrophic nutrition. [See Suetsugu et al. pp. 407–417.]

🆕 The new issue of Annals of Botany is now online!

🧬 Genetics, evolution & hybridization
🌍 Infrastructure, data & innovation
🍃 Seed biology & dispersal strategies
🌺 Pollination, mutualisms & deceptive strategies

New issue👉 botany.fyi/kes1ce

My love for solidago flowers go deep. They are just so cute 😍

Genomics/plant bio folks, I'd love to crowdsource some wisdom here: what 2026 conference would you recommend to a postdoc (me) working on a non-model species who wants to make the jump to industry computational biology within the next year? Thanks in advance!

A meme for #phylogenetics people.

Atlanta Botanical Garden Inc - Research Scientist, Genetics The Atlanta Botanical Garden seeks a highly qualified scientist with training in plant population genetics to serve in the role of Research Scientist in Genetics within the Southeastern Center for Con...

Come be my colleague! The Atlanta Botanical Garden is hiring for a Research Scientist, Genetics 🧬

🎓 Ph.D. + min. 3 yrs professional work experience
🌎 Open to international candidates

recruiting.paylocity.com/Recruiting/J...

Happy to chat about garden & departmental culture, living in ATL, etc. 🍑

Please share! I'm looking for a postdoc. The position is to lead one of the following projects: 1) regulation of plant specialized metabolism by cell fate, or 2) foliar embryogenesis in the succulent plant Kalanchoe.

Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...

Are you a mammologist whose research involves natural history collections? Apply to be my colleague!

Assistant professor position with the Department of Biological Sciences and the Natural Science Research Laboratory at Texas Tech University.

sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...

So excited to be co-leading this special issue! Cannot wait to see all the innovative ways target enrichment sequencing is being used!

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions ☺️

We have just cross the $10,000 mark. Let's keep pushing to make that $15K goal! Thanks everyone for standing up for the botanical sciences! #ADayforBSA

I'm looking to recruit a PhD student to study patterns of local adaptation and introgression across the spruce hybrid zone in the Rockies near Calgary. Projects can include field work, bioinformatics, pop gen theory, or comparison to plant/ conifer species
yeamanlab.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/...

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...

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!

💻🧬 The Swedish Museum of Natural History is seeking a bioinformatician. Permanent position, 70-80% of the time should be dedicated to supporting day-to-day activities and long-term research of research groups. 20-30% for their own research.

Please share widely!
arbetsformedlingen.se/platsbanken/...

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

The 2025-26 Eco-Evo job list is out. Good luck to those applying!

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Big news! We are recruiting a postdoc to work on tomatillo evolution: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta.... The clade containing tomatillos and its allies (ca 300 spp) has evolved lantern fruits at least 25 times - we want to know why! Join us @rociodeanna.bsky.social & @caschenck-bio.bsky.social

Seeds of Change is two weeks away! 🌾 Join us on August 27 for an evening with global food security leader, Dr. Cary Fowler. Free to attend, with in-person and virtual viewing options available. Reserve your spot: bit.ly/4faVwSc
#STLEvents #FoodSecurity

New Paper! In 2019, my first dissertation chapter revealed complicated polyploidies in the cotton family (Malvaceae) but we lacked the tools and genomes to truly understand it. Now with better genomes and improved methods, it's much more complicated than we thought. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Photo of ABLS logo embroidered on a gray hat. We are selling ABLS hats as a fundraiser to raise money for student travel awards to our annual conference. Place your order before August 17th to get your own ABLS hat. You can access the fundraiser via the link or QR code below. https://www.customink.com/fundraising/show-your-love-for-bryophytes-lichens Thank you to everyone who attended the ABLS annual meeting at the BOTANY conference. It was great to see you all and I look forward to seeing you at the ABLS meeting that will be held with BOTANY next year in Tucson, Arizona, US on August 1-5, 2026.

We are selling American Bryological and Lichenological Society hats to raise money for student travel awards to our annual conference. Place your order by August 17th.
You can access the fundraiser via the link or QR code below.
www.customink.com/fundraising/...

Linking Measures of Inbreeding and Genetic Load to Demographic Histories Across Three Species of Bears Historic and contemporary demography affect deleterious variation and inbreeding depression, meaning that measuring genetic diversity alone does not capture the nuances of genetic erosion. Contrastin....

Really excited to share this paper! We show that the threat of genetic erosion doesn’t just come down to diversity, genetic load, population size, or even inbreeding— it has to do with the evolutionary context in which those patterns arise and contemporary demographic changes doi.org/10.1111/eva....

So cool! Thanks for providing this! 🤩

Infographic showing drawings of sunflowers and sunflower parts. There are explanations to each type of flower within the sunflower inflorescence and their function

FREE TEACHING RESOURCE! 📣
I illustrated this poster as a project during the ComSciCon-ATL conference in 2024 on sunflowers and their unique inflorescence architecture. I am happy to share it here now! Feel free to download, use, and share!
You can also contact me for a higher resolution version 🌻

Did you see @racheljabaily.bsky.social new open educational resource "Biology of Plants" coloring textbook when you were at #Botany2025 ? No? WELL GO CHECK IT OUT: oercommons.org/courses/the-... Gorgeous illustrations by MGB Hurst 😍

Phyling: phylogenetic inference from annotated genomes Phyling is a fast, scalable, and user-friendly tool supporting phylogenomic reconstruction of species phylogenies directly from protein-encoded genomic data. It identifies orthologous genes by searchi...

This looks like an amazing tool
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...