Patrick McKenzie

Can't imagine what it'd be like to deal with TGCT as a child. Proud to be involved in this work characterizing the pediatric patient experience.

Salary to living wage plot with only 4 programs falling aprove the 1:1 line and paying a living wage.

Happy recruitment/interview season for PhD students! Recruiting students in ecology & evolutionary biology? Make sure your department's stipend is accurate in our database: rhettrautsaw.app/shiny/Biolog...

Hooray! Check out this special issue for some fantastic new work on flower color!

‘Dispersification’ of Agalinis (Orobanchaceae) Into South America Is Associated With Hummingbird Pollination and Perennial Life-History Shifts
@pedropezzi.bsky.social @soltislab.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New preprint is up!

Not going spoil the results for you 🤓 but we looked at some “bird” vs “bee”-pollinated Penstemon hybrid zones and came away with some pretty unexpected results!

Join @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social for the first webinar in our 2026 series: "Taxonomy: What is it good for?"

Free to all! Join us to hear @sandyknapp.bsky.social's "Of course taxonomy matters! The story of the mega-genus Solanum (Solanaceae)"

Pls register & share:

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

“Natural History, Crowdsourced,” an article in Arnoldia by Patrick McKenzie. The article begins with an image of a ruby-throated hummingbird visiting Lobelia cardinalis.

Quiet hours in the sun, meditating with the bugs, plants, and birds, are my inspiration as an evolutionary biologist.

I wrote in the most recent issue of Arnoldia about using @inaturalist.bsky.social and, more generally, about the continuing role of natural history in motivating questions in evo bio + my excitement about community science for unlocking new scales of analysis: arboretum.harvard.edu/arnoldia-sto...

Come stop by P40 and chat with me about an east coast Penstemon species - Penstemon canescens! I'll be presenting the early stages of my masters thesis and would love to bounce morphology research methods off people!

Weird wet weather has Joshua trees flowering early — or late? Help the Yoder Lab map this “bonus bloom” to understand why A flowering tree in Yucca Valley, CA, observed by iNaturalist contributor wanderingmojave on December 9. A tree with lots of flowers in Tehachapi, CA, observed by iNaturalist contributor tina9294 o…

I started getting reports of an unseasonal Joshua tree bloom in the last few weeks, and looking over records on @inaturalist.bsky.social it's pretty widespread! So we're putting out the call for folks to record this "bonus bloom" and help us study it 🌿

lab.jbyoder.org/2025/12/10/w...

I'm recruiting a Ph.D. student for Fall 2026.

Interested in comparative studies and trait evolution in fishes?

Send me an email with a CV and research interests. Please take a look at my website (jcorush.github.io ) for more information about my research.

#hybridization #minnows #mudskippers

Super happy to share the *first* lab publication. Out today in Molecular Ecology - a review of methods used to identify repeated adaptation using genomic data (1)

Molecular Ecology | Molecular Genetics Journal | Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We are recruiting field technicians to contribute to a field study of adaptation to climate in Chamaecrista fasciculata in Raleigh/Chapel Hill, NC. My collaborators at UGA will soon post similar positions in Ithaca, NY and Archbold Biological Station, FL. Please share jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/225...

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States Position Summary The Lowry Lab at Michigan State University is searching for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct molecular and physiological experiments to understand the causes of genetic va...

I am currently searching for a new postdoctoral researcher to study the evolution, genetics, and physiology of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in switchgrass at Michigan State University. This work will be funded by a newly funded five-year DOE grant. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

Aaah! New preprint from the Sethuraman Lab has dropped! Tamsen and I have been working on this for a while, and we can’t wait for your feedback. Short thread on our swanky new polyploid genome simulator, DemographiKs, and its functionality.

PhyloWeaver – Interactive phylogenetic tree editor Edit and visualize phylogenetic trees directly in your browser. PhyloWeaver lets you interactively rearrange tree topologies and export high-quality figures for publications and presentations.

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees!
yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/

Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches.
Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

Dr. Megan Barkdull is focusing her research on ants—particularly turtle ants—which produce markedly different morph from the same genetic template. Look closely at the twig (or keep reading) to check out these charismatic little critters.

🐜 Ants are her business. Welcome Dr. Megan Barkdull, one of our two new Entomology Curators, and discover some of the secrets hiding in ant DNA: go.nhm.org/megan-barkdull

Life inside rotting walnut husks » Colin Purrington's blog There’s an eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) on my neighbor’s property that rains down fruit every fall, and I finally got curious about what species might be inside. So far I’ve found four flies, ...

After years of being curious but lazy, I finally got around to documenting what's inside the black walnuts in my yard. In the process I became obsessed with the strange wasp that hunts down the pupae of the resident flies. 🌿 #wasps #diapriidae #nature #diptera colinpurrington.com/2025/11/life...

[...] are able to capture this pretty clear color divergence when we average over the landscape. But have been brainstorming about landscape genomics in M fistulosa and feel sure there must be some recent homogenization across its range due to pressure of plants from these massive seed outlets!

yes absolutely, with this being a popular garden plant / habitat restoration plant, ecotypes are being spread all over the place! We did screen out things flagged as cultivated on iNaturalist. But as you said, a lot of things don't get caught. I think it's a small enough effect that we still [...]

We put a lot of work into documenting the pipeline (here: github.com/pmckenz1/mon...) for reuse. Am excited to chat with anyone interested exploring this or related approaches for mining trait data in other systems!

We found clear west/east divergence in floral color that corresponds with a known varietal boundary. Motivates future genomics work in the color transition zone to look at the basis for this shallow divergence

Available now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! Taking on some big-scale natural history: processed >40k @inaturalist.bsky.social images of Monarda fistulosa using computer vision to query for flower presence and phenotype flower color: doi.org/10.1086/739413

NSF Research Coordination Network: ROOT & SHOOT. 2026 travel award application for members of SACNAS, MANRRS, or AISES The NSF-funded LEAPS: RCN: ROOT & SHOOT (Rooting Out Oppression Together and SHaring Our Outcomes Transparently) aims to strengthen plant science to become more welcoming to all. Part of this mission ...

ROOT & SHOOT 2026 travel awards are open for SACNAS, MANRRS, or AISES student/mentor pairs. Up to $3,000 per pair (US) / $4,000 (intl) to attend select plant-science conferences.

Apply by Dec 5, 2025.

Details & application:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Undergraduate Community at Evolution Program. Applications due January 20, 2026.

The Undergraduate Community at Evolution program provides travel funding, mentoring, and a presentation opportunity at #Evol2026. Please share with undergrads in your lab! www.evolutionsociety.org/content/educ...
@asn-amnat.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social @evolmtg.bsky.social

Really enjoyed it, sorry I had to run right after or I would’ve said hi!

Chris Martine presenting in front of a PowerPoint and chalk board

micro-break from paternity leave to catch @martinebotany.bsky.social talk for NEBS. Awesome examples of the value of natural history for generating new questions

Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers Abstract. Genomic differentiation usually accompanies speciation, but that differentiation is often highly heterogeneous across the genome. Understanding w

New and improved! (as of today, now with page numbers and an issue number ;)

"Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers"

Led by Dr. Libby Natola:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

12 images of Monarda flowers, each from a different species, showcasing a range of different shapes, sizes, and colors

Behold: Monarda diversity!