Jesse Lasky

Nesting with Herbarium Specimens - North Carolina Botanical Garden by Carol Ann McCormick Curatrix of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) One of the joys of a winter walk is discovering a bird nest revealed... Read More

Learn a new word: Caliochory" : Seed dispersal via bird nests. Check out this fun new article from @ncbg.bsky.social's Carol Ann McCormick where she discusses learning about specimens in the Herbarium grown from seeds in bird nests & what she learned about them 1/n 🧪
ncbg.unc.edu/2025/11/24/n...

If after we blow your boat up you still float, you are a witch, so we can kill you. If you drown you are not a witch.

A panel of near-isogenic lines derived from locally adapted populations of a wild plant: A powerful tool for dissecting additive and non-additive effects on ecologically important traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.03.692110v1

Biocontrol by a native hemiparasite: Rapid suppression of noxious invasive plants in a field experiment 🌷🧪

Demonstrates Melampyrum arvense as a biocontrol tool suitable for containing two harmful invasive species 📊🌏

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

ALL IMLS grants restored in every state & territory.

In response to a ruling from a federal judge in Rhode Island, the Institute of Museum and Library Services reinstated all previously canceled grants in every state and territory. It's a huge win for libraries and our communities.

"The reinstatement of all IMLS grants means that libraries across the country will be able to resume vital services for learning, imagination, and economic opportunity. We are breathing a sigh of relief, but the fight is not over." ALA President Sam Helmick. Show up for our libraries, American Library Association.

NEWS: The Institute of Museum & Library Services has restored ALL previously canceled federal grants to libraries, following a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island last month.

This is a massive win for libraries & communities in every state & territory!

Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2025/12...

Not to mention, many university trustees

Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants Washington, DC– Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersede...

Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants 📚
www.imls.gov/news/stateme...

Remote cameras catch another new jaguar in Arizona Motion-activated trail cameras in southeastern Arizona captured pictures last month of a new, never-before-seen jaguar, according to the University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center.

Motion-activated trail cameras in southeastern Arizona captured pictures last month of a new, never-before-seen jaguar, according to the University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center.

Really appreciate the clarity of the president saying black people are ruining the country and this entire room of groveling empty suits saying nothing bsky.app/profile/just...

Meet the head of a federal panel expected to upend the childhood vaccine schedule later this week. Dr. Kirk Milhoan believes that Covid was made in North Carolina and deployed to China as a bioweapon ... among other conspiracy theories. www.ms.now/news/rfk-jr-...

What does it say about this country that that the kind of open, rank bigotry Trump administration officials regularly express towards black immigrants apparently has no social cost because of the number of Americans who quietly agree or don't care.

Employment - Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

EEB Postdoctoral Fellowship @ U.Toronto app deadline Jan 15 2026. Opportunity for independent research, encourages collab across labs/disciplines. Lots of great folks to interact with, Come join us!
eeb.utoronto.ca/employment-2/

Photo montage of Tinamus resonans sp. nov., a new species of tinamou from the montane forests of the Serra do Divisor, western Amazonia, Brazil. The species is distinguished by a unique combination of plumage pattern, vocal repertoire, and ecological characteristics, including a conspicuous dark slate facial mask, vivid rufous-cinnamon underparts, and a uniform brownish-gray back. Its vocalizations are remarkable, consisting of long and powerful songs that echo strikingly across the steep montane slopes, producing a characteristic resonant effect. The species was documented exclusively at higher elevations within a transitional zone between submontane and stunted forests, where the understory is densely structured by root mats. A preliminary population estimate, based on field detections and spatial extrapolation, suggests approximately 2,106 individuals restricted to the Serra do Divisor massif. Although no immediate anthropogenic pressures were observed within its range, the species may be highly vulnerable to climate change and to proposed infrastructure projects that threaten the integrity of this federally protected region. The discovery of T. resonans highlights the biological uniqueness of the Serra do Divisor, reinforces its status as a center of montane endemism, and underscores the critical importance of maintaining its long-term conservation.

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article) A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

An important write up from the NYT on the funding changes at the NIH.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Flow chart from TX Tech memo showing that most class materials must be reviewed by chair, dean, and provost, and that all curricular material must be disclosed

TX Tech has a flow chat for guidance on what can be taught in the university system. Two things:
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.

Maps showing the predicted shift in species ancestry in the Populus hybrid zone, based on genotype-specific responses to mean coldest month temperature.

Variable reaction norms in hybrid poplars could shift the hybrid zone under future climates

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
by Mead et al.

@alaynamead.bsky.social @jillahamilton.bsky.social @WileyPlantSci #PlantScience

➡ Summary also available in ES

Congratulations to @alaynamead.bsky.social and the entire #PopUpPoplars team for this collaborative effort predicting genotypic responses across environments. This research uses 17 replicated ‘mini gardens’ to predict role of mixed ancestry to growth, survival, and expansion to novel environments

Variation in responses to temperature in admixed Populus genotypes predicts geographic shifts in regions where hybrids are favored Plastic responses of plants to their environment vary as a result of genetic differentiation within and among species. To accurately predict rangewide responses to climate change, it is necessary to...

doi.org/10.1111/nph....

RegEvol: detection of directional selection in regulatory sequences through phenotypic predictions and phenotype-to-fitness functions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.690685v1

Look around. The case for more, not less, liberal arts education - actual, real education in reading, writing, thinking, arguing, analyzing, & synthesizing by doing the actual hard work for which there is no substitute - is stronger than it’s ever been at any point in human history.

Woman deported from Maryland shown on video being dragged in Ghana Rabbiatu Kuyateh was detained this summer at her annual ICE check-in, her son said. She moved to the D.C. area 30 years ago as she fled civil war in Sierra Leone.

🧵This 58-year-old nurse from Maryland is seen being violently dragged along the ground by officials in Ghana.

Trump deported her there.

This abhorrent & disgusting abuse of a woman who saved American lives and cared for injured and ill Americans for 30 years.

All the details below are worse.

WSJ Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions. Another Trump donor, Stephen P. Lynch, paid $600,000 this year to a lobbyist close to Trump Jr. who is helping him seek a Treasury Department license to buy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from a Russian state-owned company.

One sign that he may be serious is that some of his most-trusted friends, sanctioned billionaires from his St. Petersburg hometown-Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, Boris and Arkady-have sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals, according to people familiar with the meetings and European security officials. That includes reviving the giant Nord Stream pipeline, sabotaged by Ukrainian tactical divers, and under European Union sanctions. Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil met with Russia's biggest state energy company, Rosneft, to discuss returning to the massive Sakhalin gas project if Moscow and Washington gave the green light.

Extraordinary WSJ reporting today that unveils the extent to which Trump, Witkoff, Kushner and US business executives are salivating over business deals with Russia while Putin’s forces kidnap Ukranian children and bomb civilians in their apartments.

🎁 www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Ancient balanced polymorphism underlies long-standing adaptation for seasonal camouflage in the least weasel Unraveling how adaptive traits originate and evolve is key to understanding the mechanisms shaping species’ diversity and their adaptive potential. Seasonal color molts, from summer-brown to winter-wh...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. "The order was to kill everybody," one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack - the opening salvo in the Trump administration's war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

This is murder. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

A lot has happened since our first announcement of #ExE2026, an evolutionary ecology conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall from June 29 to July 3 2026.

Have a look at our new website to see our confirmed plenary speakers, the mid-conference excursions, and more.

👉 evoxeco.uk 👈

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

The role of cytonuclear interactions to plant adaptation across a Populus hybrid zone | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Co-adaptation of cytoplasmic and nuclear genomes is critical to physiological function for many species. Despite this understanding, hybridization can disrupt co-adaptation, leading to a mismatch betw...

Congratulations to @michellezavala.bsky.social on the publication of her PhD chapter examining the consequences of cytonuclear interactions and the breakup of organelle-nuclear ancestry to physiological function across environments in a Poplar hybrid zone.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Effects of range‐wide variation in climate and isolation on floral traits and reproductive output of Clarkia pulchella PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Plant mating systems and geographic range limits are conceptually linked by shared underlying drivers, including landscape-level heterogeneity in climate and in species' abunda...

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3732/...

Faculty panel says Texas A&M wrongly fired professor Texas A&M did not have good cause to fire a professor after a video of a gender lesson created a political storm, and the school failed to follow due process, a faculty appeal committee found.

Reinstate Dr. McCoul--now.

And yes, the swag bags. Attendees received MAHA-branded tote bags with:

- Packets of creatine
- Beef tallow potato chips ($79 for a 6-pack!!)
- Mouth tape
- RFK Jr's biography
- Beef protein bars