Mathryn Kercier

The season of Torrey Talks begins again! On Mon, April 7th (6pm EST), John Zeigler, manager of the Thain Family Forest at the #NYBG will speak on the efforts to reintroduce extirpated flora into the garden grounds! Registration & info here: shorturl.at/HMdNP

#botany #lecture 🌾🌿🧪

FUND DON'T FREEZE DC RALLY WHEN WHERE WHAT February 19th 12 PM HHS Building Research and 200 Independence academia are Ave SW, under attack. Join Washington DC the nationwide fight for healthcare, education, and jobs! On February 19th, join researchers and academics at the DC rally for the nationwide fight against federal attacks on research and higher education: FUND DON'T FREEZE! Show them that life saving science and academia can NOT be bought by unaccountable, unqualified billionaires! Program to include speeches from affected researchers, scientists, educators, and healthcare professionals. Bring your protest signs and make your voice heard!

IMPORTANT ACTION in response to the illegal firings of scientists and public health workers at HHS, NIH, CDC, and other federal agencies by the Trump administration.

Rally at HHS this Wed, Feb 19 at 12 pm. Show your support!

RSVP here: docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/...

@nihfellowsunited.bsky.social

BIRD REPORT sandhill cranes! Like 80 of them!

This has been your Sunday afternoon BIRD REPORT

We have a cover!
Click here for preordering the book: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204909...

Some 🧪 podcasts with stories about being underrepresented in science by UR scientists:

@weouthere.bsky.social Black, Indigenous, and other UR ecologists, animal biologists, and more tell stories about their experiences in field work

@lostwomenofsci.bsky.social women who have been overlooked in 🧪

Positions of NYC mayoral candidates on a mask ban:

AGAINST mask ban - Zohran Mamdani, Michael Blake, Jessica Ramos

AGAINST mask ban, but support additional penalties for people who commit crimes while wearing masks - Brad Lander, Zellnor Myrie

SUPPORT mask ban - Scott Stringer, Whitney Tilson

a man in a black shirt is looking at a screen with a red background Alt: a man in a black shirt is looking at a screen with a red background

Worried about losing access to US federal data that may go off-line, or already is? You’re not alone—but duplication isn’t the answer.

Many ongoing efforts have already archived key datasets and many more are ongoing. Check out these existing resources and, if you can, support their work. 🧵

Cover of the book "Convenience Store Woman". Yellow cover with pink name badge.

Just finished reading Convenience Store Woman, a touching and somewhat bittersweet commentary on societal expectations and particularly the roles women are expected to inhabit

Every news story about egg prices needs to be paired with concurrent reporting about bird flu how have we not learned this very simple lesson 🫠

A Legal Counteroffensive to Beat Back Trump’s Government Purges A raft of new lawsuits contend that President Trump and Elon Musk are breaking the law to ransack the F.B.I. and other federal agencies. The courts will now decide.

Federal workers set off a counteroffensive with a raft of new lawsuits that contend that President Trump and Elon Musk are breaking the law to ransack the FBI and other federal agencies.

Photograph of two people in chest waders walking in the center of a stream. Dr. Amina Pollard, a Black freshwater ecologist, is on the left.

In honor of #WorldWetlandsDay and #BlackHistoryMonth, check out this @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social panel on Black Ecologists-Shaping the Science of Ecology, featuring Dr. Rashidah Farid, Dr. Amina Pollard, and Dr. Steward Pickett. Recorded in 2021, it still resonates today. esa.org/black-ecolog...

If you want to control the price of eggs, you need to control bird flu.

And the worst thing you can do if you want to control bird flu is censor scientists and scrub CDC data.

Famously no partisan politics by MLK

Today's action from the @indivisible.org mailing list: contact your House reps to tell them to vote against the Dreamer Deportation Act (also known as the Laken Riley Act).

You can find which 48 democrats voted "yea" last time, tell them that that's unacceptable and to vote "nay" on HR 29.

starship troubleshooting computer is being mean

Mounted mastodon skeleton on a bed of gravel, in front of framed oil paintings.

Mounted T. rex skeleton posed as though prying the head off a prone Triceratops.

Tableau of Moropus and Daeodon facing off over a pile of rhino bones.

Gaggles of visitors looking over rail at quarry wall of dinosaur bones at Dinosaur National Monument

Just some amazing things created by federal civil servants 💚

Image with covers of each book I read this year.

2024 books

Star Trek The Next Generation scene. Early series Picard is shown up close with a determined look of contentment. He's locked into eye contact with someone just off screen, and smouldering. Closed caption reads: (champagne fizzing)

PhyloPic PhyloPic is an open database of free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses. Download silhouettes for use in educational materi...

Ok people. I’m drawing silhouettes this afternoon. If you have a paper coming up and you are in need of a #silhouette please let me know and I will have it ready today. As always I upload all my silhouettes to phylopic.org

I also have tutorials on how to put a silhouette in a plot in R.

A 6-panel comic. In panel 1, two people talk against a snowy backdrop. In panel 1, the first person says "Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in SANTA, you get something sinister?" and the other says, "Yes: A ANTS." In panel 2, the first person says "Wait, no, that's-" The second says, "How do you think Santa finds his way to all those homes at night? Pheromone trails!" In panel 3, we're down in an ant nest. "Once the night is over, Santa returns to the North Pole, mates with the Queen Claus, and dies." There's a festive ant nest with an ant-bodied Mr and Ms Claus looking at each other lovingly. Panel 4, "The Queen begins laying eggs that will hatch into next year’s workers." The Queen lays eggs, and the workers are ant larvae with elf heads. Panel 5, "Next December, she will produce fertile Queens and Santas and the cycle will begin anew." The Queen lays eggs with both Santa and Ms Claus heads. In panel 6, we return to the two people talking, and the second person says "Of course, one queen must best the rest in combat, and the workers can't interfe-" "Stop." "But I haven't told you about the Santa-mimic spiders!"

Happy Christmas Eve. Every year I inflict this upon you, one of my least popular comics ever. Enjoy!

Happening now: Amazon Labor Union workers and supporters are rallying outside JFK8 on Staten Island ahead of a midnight strike due to Amazon refusing to come to the bargaining table following a Dec. 15 deadline.

#STRIKEMAS

BREAKING: The biggest strike against Amazon in U.S. history is happening right now.

The Teamsters are picketing facilities across the country.

The union has organized workers at 10 Amazon locations AND they're putting up picket lines at hundreds of other Amazon sites nationwide.

Maybe I’m an old crusty guy but I don’t really want an “AI revolution” in science or conservation. Like don’t we all realize we should slow down a bit? Science is not just about producing new knowledge as quickly and efficiently as possible. We are not just little knowledge producing drones.

Photo of white flower, Asimina reticulata. Overlayed with screenshot of text "Does floral preformation decrease morphological variation in Asimina?"

On the way to #Botany2024! I'll be giving a lightning talk on Wednesday and generally hanging out at the @TorreyBotanical booth 🌿🧪🌾

It is a crime Waffle House isn't in every US city. It is an institution.

Controlled experiment finds no detectable citation bump from Twitter promotion Multiple studies across a variety of scientific disciplines have shown that the number of times that a paper is shared on Twitter (now called X) is correlated with the number of citations that paper r...

🚨 Exciting update: #scicomm study reveals that tweeting about published papers does NOT correlate with increased citation rates. Led by @trevorabranch.bsky.social , featuring @whysharksmatter.bsky.social @solomonrdavid.bsky.social @danirabaiotti.bsky.social & more. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Have you renewed your Torrey membership for 2024? Becoming a member is the best way to get updates on our upcoming events and journal issues! Renew or begin your membership today - www.torreybotanical.org/membership/ 🧪🌎🌿🍄🌾

Please #Repost!
I may develop a seminar course for incoming graduate students. You know, those "grad school 101", "principles of research", community building courses.
What was your favorite / the most valuable part that course you took in grad school?

Reading this paper in that sort of class my first semester in grad school was pretty foundational journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

We had another memorable assignment to look up a few interesting sounding non-academic job ads & review the job requirements / preferred skills / duties

Our next weekend is packed with events! 🧪🌎🌿🌾

3/22: Laura Briscoe leads a herbarium tour co-hosted with the @newyorkflora (limited tickets remaining).

Then that evening, we host our annual banquet with a lecture by Dr. Emily Sessa - “Stories and insights from the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium”.