Jim Leebens-Mack

Are you an early-career biologist or ecologist who would benefit from an invited seminar? Would you like to come to UMaine next fall or spring to give a talk? Leave a brief comment with some info about what you do. I'm co-hosting our seminar series again, and am filling out our rosters.

Herbarium director position opening at Oregon State University ‪@osu-herbarium.bsky.social‬ Great opportunity for herbarium- and field-trained botanists at any rank. bpp.oregonstate.edu/bpp/about/op...

Come be my colleague (& @jacquelyngill.bsky.social's and other great folks)!

UMaine is hiring a Genetics Facilities Manager to lead the CORE eDNA and DNA Sequencing Labs. Hiring range is $75-85k (up $20k from previous round)

fa-ewca-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Some months later, work is now published @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Biodiversity Collections Task Force is a nascent effort to help collections through anticipated difficult times in the near future.

We are planning a webinar series, beginning in September 2025.

Let us know which topics would be most useful to you:
lnkd.in/gQmyMKmN

Let congress know that pro-growth = pro-science!

‘This is bull——”: National Science Foundation employees protest HUD's takeover Dozens of National Science Foundation employees crowded the agency’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday to protest the news that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, w...

Another day testing the limits of resilience.

The Alexandria NSF building was designed for the NSF merit review process (gold standard), complete with a floor devoted to panels.

Now we aren’t allowed to have in person panels.

The loss of US science leadership will haunt this country for decades.

Karolina Heyduk: A Career Shaped by Desert Plants and Midnight Photosynthesis Botany One interviews Dr Karolina Heyduk, a plant evolutionary biologist interested in the origins a unique type of photosynthesis.

Check out this interview with BSA member and BSA Director at Large for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Karolina Heyduk!

botany.one/2025/06/karo...

Marchantia Pangenome Highlights Adaptive Nature of Plant Lineages | Joint Genome Institute Understanding the shared genetic toolkit of ancestral and present-day plants

The #OpenGreenGenomes Project, supported through our #CommunityScience Program, represents 35 major evolutionary plant lineages — including M. polymorpha, or liverwort.

For decades it has been used as a model for evolutionary studies. 🖥️🧬🌱

@jleebensmack.bsky.social @maximebonhomme.bsky.social

Plastids in a Pinch: Coordinating Stress and Developmental Responses Through Retrograde Signalling Plastids can sense environmental stress and improve whole plant adaptation through retrograde communication to the nucleus. Recent studies have advanced our understanding of integrated canonical and ...

Very happy to see this review by @elizavveen.bsky.social, Jesse Küpers and myself now out in Plant Cell & Environment! About how stresses impact chloroplasts, and how this can steer plant development via retrograde signaling 🌱 @pph-wur.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pce.15664

Call your congressional representatives and Senators!

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic.

Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.

But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget.

Speak up now before it is too late.

(inflation adjusted $-s below)

Tools to Take Action

9/ 🚨🚨🚨 CALL TO ACTION

Call your elective representatives to tell them how these draconian cuts will directly harm (as applicable):

your state
your local communities
your trainees
yourself

See the #SaveNSF website for some inspiration:

www.savensf.com/take-action

Senior Researchers 60,400 --> 16,900 Other Professionals 14,400 --> 4,100 Postdoctoral Associates 5,500 --> 1,000 Graduate Students 41,500 --> 12,400 Undergraduate Students 37,300 --> 8,000 PreK-12 Teachers 42,900 --> 8,200 PreK-12 Students 128,100 --> 39,400 Total Number of People 330,100 --> 90,000

🚨🚨 Friday night news drop from National Science Foundation!! 🧪

NSF just released its detailed budget request for next year: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

We knew it was going to be bad...and it lives up. Guts direct NSF support for a **quarter million people**

🧵 on some highlights...

Committee Members - House Committee on Science Space & Tech - Republicans

Mike Collins is on the Science, Space and Technology committee - science.house.gov/committee-me.... We can hope that some of his staffers actually care about the responsibilities of this important committee. Keep reaching out to them!

More details coming soon, but mark your calendars ...

Breakout meeting for @systbiol.bsky.social‬ The Society of Systematic Biologists - will be Jan 9-11 in Baton Rouge!

Topic is 'The Importance of Natural History Collections'

@jembrown.bsky.social is primary host/organizer

ssb2026.github.io

⏰ASPB Member Opportunity: Early Career Representative Application closing soon!🌱

Learn more and apply by June 1!👉https://ecr.secure-platform.com/a

#PlantScience

🚨 Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (Austin, TX) is looking for a Director of Gardens and Collections 🏵️

👩‍🌾 Required 5+ years of garden leadership & team mgmt,
👩‍🎓 Bachelor’s in horticulture, ecology, landscape architecture or related
💸 $85k+

#horticulturejobs #publicgardenjobs #nativeplantjobs

Summer fun!

Come join the vibrant plant biology research community at @universityofga.bsky.social #UGAPlantCenter - plantcenter.uga.edu

Just commented here too - can be anonymous, and standing up for NSF/NIH takes less time than standing in line at the grocery store checkout!!

If you’re a scientist who values strong institutional support, join us! The GMI is currently hiring new Group Leader positions, including a Junior Group Leader to lead an independent research group addressing fundamental questions in molecular plant biology. Links below.

A chocolate cake with red and white decorations and lit candles shaped as the number 75. Bold text reads: ‘The NSF Turns 75 Today. What has it done over the past 7 decades?’ The background is a celebratory red with a spray-paint texture.

HAPPY 75th, NSF!

We’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of NSF’s most transformative accomplishments—innovations that have shaped our world and continue to drive progress in health, technology, the environment, and beyond.

Read on 🧵(1/11):

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Cuts to US science will take a generation to repair — leaders must speak up now There’s no mystery to innovation and economic growth; the US must nurture its scientists or find out the hard way.

A piece in this issue of Nature by Michael S. Lubell
"Cuts to US science will take a generation to repair — leaders must speak up now"
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Check out this initiative led by the student-run organization Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club!
They are asking scientists to contribute to a letter-writing campaign about the impacts of funding cuts. (And they hosted a great "how to write an OpEd" webinar yesterday!)

Screen shot of the website with the link of the May 5th 2025 Legal filing submitted by AAU, APLI, ACE, and 13 Universities contesting cuts to NSF research

AAU, APLU, ACE & 13 universities filed a lawsuit contesting the cutting of overhead cap on NSF grants #resist www.aau.edu/key-issues/l...

If you are a person who cares about the future of science in the US, please take actions this week to #SaveNSF. @asn-amnat.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social are leading a week of action - here is a Media Support Tool from the societies docs.google.com/document/d/1... 🧪🧑‍🔬🧬🖥️🦑

Commemorating 75 Years of Discovery and Innovation

Time for folks to step up and share data on the impact of NSF funded research! NSFhttps://www.nsf.gov/75years