Dr. Jon Bennett

ICOM 2026 Visit the post for more.

Get ready for Cairns! ICOM2026 (formally known as ICOM13) is now online. I’ll be there next year and I hope you’ll join us! (I’ve already planned my post-conference bike tour…in Samoa!). 🍄🚲🌊

icom2026.org

Hi everyone, I am launching a community science scheme "Spider Spies" where we are asking you, to send us pictures and if you're keen and able samples of Misumena vatia, the Flower Crab Spider to investigate their interactions with their host flowers and the invertebrate community around them.

🚨 POST DOC 🚨

The Suding Lab at the University of CO - Boulder is recruiting a Postdoc researcher to build on an ongoing project examining grassland fuels, wildfire risk, & management questions.

Applications close May 8, 2025.
Start date will be before September 2025.

🌎🌾🧪🌱🌿🍁💻🔥📈

Optimising wheat-fungal symbioses for enhanced nutrition and sustainability at University of Sheffield on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Optimising wheat-fungal symbioses for enhanced nutrition and sustainability at University of Sheffield, listed on FindAPhD.com

I'm looking for a mycorrhiza-motivated PhD student to start this project, fully funded by a Rank Prize Lord Selborne Scholarship, in October 2025 - please contact me via email for more information and forward on to potentially interested people... www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Hi Folks! Myself and the Barberan Lab at U of A are still looking for a PhD student to work on an NSF funded project exploring effects of fire and invasion on soil microbes. We are looking for someone to start in Fall! SOON! Email me if you are interested! PLS Repost!

@EsaSeeds

🚨PhD position in Functional Plant Diversity and Community Assembly available in Prof. Vicky Temperton's group (@7toucans.bsky.social) at the Leuphana University Lueneburg (Germany).

Deadline: May 4, 2025 🧪🌍

www.leuphana.de/en/universit...

We're Recruiting! — Blue Carbon Canada

We're Hiring for 8 Positions!! Interested in conducting research on nature based solutions in Canada's coastal ecosystems? Blue Carbon Canada is recruiting 3 PDFs & 5 PhD students for Sept. 2025 in partnership w @wwfcanada.org www.bluecarboncanada.ca/were-recruit... Open to int'l scholars Pls repost

🌿 The first article of our DarkDivNet consortium, led by Meelis Pärtel, has been published in Nature. Our dataset from 5500 sites in 119 world regions, collected specially for this purpose, shows that plant diversity is negatively affected not only by direct human impact such as local disturbance.

Global impoverishment of natural vegetation revealed by dark diversity - Nature A comparison of alpha diversity (number of plant species) and dark diversity (species that are currently absent from a site despite being ecologically suitable) demonstrates the negative effects of re...

Excited to announce our new paper, “Global impoverishment of natural vegetation revealed by dark diversity,” out today in Nature – and it’s open access! Huge global collaboration led by Meelis Pärtel 🌐@macroecologyut.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Map from the article Pärtel et al. 2025, Nature.

Data sampling. Photos by Marie.

New global study of dark diversity by #DarkDivNet led by Meelis Pärtel, where Aleš, Maruška, and Eva are co-authors with the dataset from Novohradské Hory, is now out in
@nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ideally interested candidates will have applied in the next two weeks, when application review begins. Email me your CV and letter. Jon.bennett@usask.ca

Salary starts at $60,000 CDN and includes benefits. The person will need to be in Saskatoon, Canada - a mid-sized city with a low cost of living – but some remote work may be possible. Interested candidates can email a statement of interest to me: jon.bennett@usask.ca. Please spread the word.

I am looking for a postdoc to join a large project where we are sampling plants and soils from across the Canadian prairies to identify genomic indicators (plant genotypes, eDNA, soil biome) of ecosystem function. This person would work with the team to integrate data, with significant latitude. 🌍

Hi Bala
Could you add me as well? Thanks

There is no statistical solution to the problem of causal inference from observational data, it requires good scientific & statistical judgement, & knowledge of the literature. Folks like short cuts (propensity scores, E values etc) to avoid hard thinking. Such short cuts don’t exist.

Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia The billionaire has become one of the most prominent supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.

If you've never donated to Wikipedia, now's the time. Elon Musk is attacking it because it's one of the only sources of honest, curated information that he can't control.
www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-ta...

Always exciting when a student publishes their work. Former MSc student Aisa found complex responses among Medicago sativa cultivars to commercial AMF inoculum. AMF enhanced stress, but that depended on the cultivar and response measured. Free read only link: rdcu.be/d3vug

It's happening! We are coming back with virtual meetings! Save The Date - August 6-8, 2025. 📅🇨🇦🍄🛜. Check your emails or social media for more details. PS. Contact us if you want to receive emails! #CFN25 #SaveTheDate #FungiareBack

Apparently they use epoll. No good?

Doesn't U Alberta have one they support? We use poll everywhere and it's fine, but we also have an institutional license.

The value of field research in academia From anthropology to zoology, immersion within communities, cultural settings, and study systems is integral to research and learning (1, 2). Fieldwork, the direct observation and collection of data i...

Strongly agree with this letter in Science arguing that field-based research should be more highly and fairly valued in academia. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events - Nature Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes fro...

Science takes time - a lot of time. Time that is more and more difficult to make available because of increased workloads. Time that exceeds the temporary contracts of postdocs and PhDs.

I'll illustrate this using our paper published in Nature yesterday. 🧵 (1/x)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Species‐rich old grasslands have beneficial effects on the health and gut microbiome of bumblebees Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

This new study suggests that high-quality old grassland may be particularly good at supporting pollinators because diverse food sources provided by such grassland provide additional health benefits.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
| Pornon et al. @funecology.bsky.social

Reviewers, consider not suggesting we should have added molecular analyses that are ‘trivial’. Not everyone has the same resourcesthat you do. Reviews are for constructive criticism of what they submitted, not what you wish they did.

-signed, me trying to share a small but interesting experiment

This is a short call and I am looking for applications by March 24, 2024. Interested applicants should send their CVs to jon.bennett@usask.ca. 4/4

Salary is $60,000 CAD per year plus benefits. The successful candidate must be willing to relocate to Saskatoon, Canada – thriving small city with a relatively low cost of living. 3/4

The successful candidate will work on a large project on grassland ecology. We will be sampling plants, soils, and insects across the Canadian prairies to identify native plants associated with enhanced ecosystem services. 2/4

We are reopening a search for a postdoc in my group. I am looking for a curious person with an interest in plant-soil / plant-insect interactions to join our large and diverse team (research-groups.usask.ca/bennett-lab). 1/4