So excited to have been accepted to write this piece. Thanks to all who have entertained my ramblings over the years and have encouraged me in my passion for #ecophysiology and #evolution 🙏
#IAmABotanist 🌱
So excited to have been accepted to write this piece. Thanks to all who have entertained my ramblings over the years and have encouraged me in my passion for #ecophysiology and #evolution 🙏
#IAmABotanist 🌱
Trump Posts Racist Video President Trump posted a video portraying the Obamas as apes, which the White House brushed off as an "internet meme." now
Trump Posts Video Portraying Obamas as Apes The White House press secretary dismissed criticism of the clip's racist content, shared by the president's Truth Social account, as "fake outrage." • Listen to this article • 2:52 min Learn more By Erica L. Green and Isabella Kwai Feb. 6, 2026 Updated 10:29 a.m. ET President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, the latest in a long pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive stereotypes about Black Americans and others.
I don’t know if this counts as a watershed moment or whatever but it is significant that even the NYT has to drop the pretense and call it what it is.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/u...
Paid Summer Internships...
Join us for a summer of ecological research at the Holden Arboretum.
Opportunities in restoration ecology, population ecology, plant ecophysiology, forest health, and more.
On-site housing available at low cost.
lnkd.in/gjWUznhj
Some history from a historian.
26.01.2026 16:03 — 👍 213 🔁 42 💬 8 📌 0
Here is a working Starter Pack for Plant Ecophysiologists! Please let us know if you want to be added to this list in a comment or DM. #botany #plantecophys #PhysFam
go.bsky.app/Pbq39H7
We’re advertising a fully funded 4-year PhD position on modelling firn changes at the glacier scale within the SNF-funded deFIRN project, based at ETH Zurich & WSL.
Apply here: jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...
@wslresearch.bsky.social @slfdavos.bsky.social
🍁Funding for new PhD students ($40k/yr) & postdocs ($70k/yr) coming from outside Canada. Contact me if interested in #Ecophysiology at #UBC in #Vancouver! Possible topics: leaf physiology, thermal ecology, microclimate, scaling, tree physiology, forest ecology, more! michaletzlab.org
Please share!
Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina Adam Scharpf Christian Gläßel Abstract: Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.
Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers
“We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.”
(Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)
🌳PhD Opportunity in plant ecophysiology🌡️ Join EPFL (Switzerland) for fully-funded 4yr PhD on tree responses to air drought and heat. Climate chamber + long-term experiments to uncover physiological thresholds under climate change. www.epfl.ch/labs/perl/pe...
07.01.2026 16:25 — 👍 27 🔁 26 💬 0 📌 0
Application Process Image Woman behind a podium presenting. Jessie Golding, BBCS postdoc, presenting at ICCB 2025. Apply to become a Lovejoy Fellow by submitting your resume, cover letter, and contact information for three references through the University of Arizona Talent Portal (link upcoming) by the first review date of January 30, 2026. Your cover letter should: Identify 1-2 Lovejoy BBCS faculty you would be interested in working with and explain the primary research directions you would want to pursue in collaboration with this faculty member. You are strongly encouraged to reach out to faculty before submitting your application. Describe your experience with or interest in inter- or transdisciplinary research. Explain how this experience will positively impact your career trajectory.
New postdoctoral fellowship opportunity! Please pass along. Excited to announce the launch of the Tom Lovejoy Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona for innovative research to protect species, sustain ecosystems, and promote a thriving planet lovejoycenter.arizona.edu/lovejoy-fell... 🧪🌐🌾
19.12.2025 18:11 — 👍 50 🔁 48 💬 3 📌 2It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable.
17.12.2025 02:50 — 👍 554 🔁 274 💬 28 📌 16
The Trump Administration's plan to dismantle the @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is senseless & dangerous.
It would weaken weather forecasting, climate research, & the science that keeps people safe.
We urge that this plan be abandoned.
Call Congress to #SaveNCAR today. buff.ly/7ka1BQA
Check out our #MichaletzLab presentations at #AGU2025 this week! @agu.org @agubiogeosciences.bsky.social @gec-agu.bsky.social @nicolebison.bsky.social @milossimovic.bsky.social
15.12.2025 18:49 — 👍 13 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
A festive digital illustration features the blue R logo wearing a red Santa hat with white trim on the left. To its right stands a green Christmas tree made entirely of curly braces arranged in a triangular shape. White and light-blue %>% pipe symbols float across a dark blue, starry background like snowflakes. A speech bubble above the R logo says “Ho Ho Ho! 📦” in red text. At the bottom, white text reads: “R Package Development Advent Calendar 2025” and below it, “25 Days of Coding Magic • Dec 1–25.”
🎄 ANNOUNCEMENT: R Package Development Advent Calendar 2025! 🎄
Starting December 1st, I'm launching a 25-day journey through modern R package development. here's why you should follow along 🧵
#rstats #RPackageAdvent2025 #OpenSource
Our department at UBC is hiring for a professor of forest ecophysiology, including "tree ecophysiology; plant abiotic or biotic stress physiology; forest mortality and climate change responses; forest carbon balance; tree water relations; or nutrient use." Learn more at: tinyurl.com/5da56f5c
06.10.2025 22:12 — 👍 63 🔁 69 💬 0 📌 1
Golden Ears is surely one of the prettiest mountains in SWBC.
23.11.2025 02:03 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0This would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn't so frightening
21.11.2025 19:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
We published this open letter on #UrbanForests as essential(!!) infrastructure for climate resilience & biodiversity aimed at policymakers at #COP30.
4🗝️priorities🧵👇
@plantspeopleplanet.bsky.social @fornalab.bsky.social @fbwugent.bsky.social @meisebotanicgarden.bsky.social
@westsyduhie.bsky.social
Check out our new paper! @brodersenlab.bsky.social
19.11.2025 19:10 — 👍 15 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
🎴NEW PAPER!🎴
Majorities in 11 HICs support:
✅Foreign aid
✅Debt relief for low-income countries (LICs)
✅An international carbon price financing a worldwide basic income
✅An international 2% tax on wealth above $1 million with 30% funding LICs
and much more.
bsky.app/profile/wid....
A 🧵⬇️
Screenshot of a Tweet pointing out that academic spam is actually in its own way kind of encouraging.
I think about this post every day 🧪
07.11.2025 12:15 — 👍 637 🔁 111 💬 3 📌 1
Watercolour painting of a young Tulip Poplar tree on the cover of 'Journal Experimental Botany', for volume 76, Issue 18, 2025
The cover of @jxbotany.bsky.social is my painting of Tulip Poplar, a North-American native & global street tree that was the focus of our paper visualising freezing spread & freeze-thaw embolism in leaves!
A lovely way to finish this multi-year mutli-country project
🔗below
@brodersenlab.bsky.social
Mamdani: "We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."
05.11.2025 04:38 — 👍 18528 🔁 4368 💬 164 📌 345Mamdani quotes Eugene V. Debs, who earns a roar of approval just at the mention of his name.
05.11.2025 04:20 — 👍 1344 🔁 139 💬 14 📌 19
Venn diagram of major strategies used to cope with heat stress with examples of species expected to specialize in heat tolerance/acclimation (yellow circles), heat avoidance through drought-deciduousness (green circles), and heat avoidance through homeothermic leaf cooling (blue circles).
High #temperature acclimation of #photosystem II in land plants
#TansleyReview by @bposch.bsky.social et al.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@hultinelab.bsky.social #PlantScience #photosynthesis
The sweetest maple!
24.10.2025 22:25 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Applications are now open for two two-year UBC Biodiversity Postdoc Fellowships biodiversity.ubc.ca/training-and.... $77,000 /y + benefits and $7000 /y research funds.
24.10.2025 20:55 — 👍 17 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 3
Join us on campus & online on Thursday, 30 October 2025 at 1pm for a seminar by Josef Garen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. Details: rb.gy/2pdjbo
21.10.2025 01:07 — 👍 4 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
Please pass along, I’m recruiting PhD students to join our Macroecology Lab @uofa-eeb.bsky.social We study phys ecology, macroecology, biodiversity - spanning scaling, trait-based ecology, theory, comparative biology & ecoinformatics. Several avenues for funding. Please reach out if interested🧪🌐🌾
21.10.2025 05:13 — 👍 105 🔁 106 💬 2 📌 1
US Government accounts have arrived on Bluesky.
Block on sight.
Protect your digital space.
Be aware that the DHS account in particular is known to quote dunk on regular people to encourage their followers to harass them.
The detach quote function will come in very handy here…
