Ryan P. O’Donnell

E&E Seminar Series: A symphony of colour and scents: Complex anthocyanin and terpene synthase mechanisms underpin the evolution of species-rich Australian orchids Many flowering plants have evolved diverse strategies to communicate with and attract animal pollinators. We have discovered exciting new evidence for the role of anthocyanins and terpenes in the evol...

Join us on campus & online on Thursday, 31 July 2025 at 1pm for a seminar by Dr Darren Wong, Postdoctoral Fellow from the Peakall Group, RSB, ANU. Details: tiny.cc/gizp001

Would love to be added, thanks!

Thanks @westerdijkinst.bsky.social !

A red flower on a green stem withe the words: BHL Call for support now open overlayed.

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

Unicore Enables Scalable and Accurate Phylogenetic Reconstruction with Structural Core Genes Abstract. The analysis of single-copy core genes, common to most members of a clade, is important for key tasks in biology including phylogenetic reconstru

so cool! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... Nice work @martinsteinegger.bsky.social et al :)

We argue that the continued use of anamorph/teleomorph-typified generic names in #Ceratobasidiaceae hinders a holistic understanding of this family, when it is clear that pathogenic and symbiotic species are likely united in their fundamental biology.

We also found a distinct difference in the way certain names are used in the literature: pathogen researchers are more likely to use Rhizoctonia and Thanatephorus; while orchid mycorrhizal researchers are more likely to use Ceratobasidium and Ceratorhiza.

Names transferred to #Rhizoctonia include species formerly circumscribed within #Ceratobasidium, #Ceratorhiza, #Moniliopsis, #Thanatephorus, #Tofispora, and #Ypsilonidium (among other synonyms).

We reiterate the fact that the genera within Ceratobasidiaceae are paraphyletic, and formalise the recognition of a single genus; Rhizoctonia. We present 32 new combinations, to make a total of 52 accepted species of Rhizoctonia.

At long last, our manuscript ‘Rise up, Rhizoctonia: moving to one fungus, one name in the Ceratobasidiaceae’ has finally been published in Persoonia 🎉
Here we resolve several longstanding taxonomic issues within Ceratobasidiaceae and present a unified Rhizoctonia
www.persoonia.org/images/Volum...

#mycosky #mycology bluesky! I’m looking for some inspiration - what are some of your favourite recent (published within the last 1–3 years) fungal comparative phylogenomic studies that you’ve read?

26 freshly sequenced whole genomes of undescribed orchid-associated Rhizoctonia spp. 🤙 14 more genomes to go and then I’m on the home stretch for the PhD 🫨

After 372 days since submission, and 14 reviewers who committed to reviewing but didn’t wind up submitting a review, our Rhizoctonia nomenclature manuscript has finally been accepted for publication in Persoonia! 🥲

Panel discussion at the Bundanon art museum with three people, Richard Morecroft, Keg de Souza, and Ryan O’Donnell seated left to right in that order

Richard Morecroft, Keg de Souza and Ryan O’Donnell standing left to right in front of the Shoalhaven River at the Bundanon Art Museum

Had such a great time over the weekend talking with artist Keg de Souza and panel chair Richard Morecroft about fungi and the intersections of art and science for ‘Magic Mycelium’ at the Bundanon Art Museum - such an incredible art space and landscape.

At long last, the final typeset version of our Diurideae manuscript has finally been published in Systematic Biology! Check it out at doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

While Uni Vice-Chancellors rake in millions, young researchers struggle to survive Australia's university Vice-Chancellors are among the highest paid in the world, while Australia's PhD students are some of the lowest paid. That is not a sign of a healthy education system.

Australia’s university Vice-Chancellors are among the highest paid in the world.
Australia’s PhD students are some of the lowest paid.
That is not a sign of a healthy education system.

Read more from @jack-thrower.bsky.social:

Global meta-analysis shows action is needed to halt genetic diversity loss - Nature A comprehensive meta-analysis of global terrestrial and marine genetic diversity covering more than three decades of research demonstrates rapid loss of genetic diversity and identifies conservation i...

Out now in @nature.com! Our comprehensive meta-analysis of global terrestrial and marine genetic diversity demonstrates rapid loss of genetic diversity and identifies conservation interventions that could mitigate this process
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪🌍🦤🧬
#consgen #PopGen

PhD student Jesse Gardner-Russell earns $20 an hour. Experts say low pay is turning Australia’s best and brightest away The University of Melbourne student whose work could contribute to curing blindness says ‘people are shocked to find out how unlivable it is’

“The PhD stipend is $33,511 … well below minimum wage of $47,627”

“Universities can raise the stipend to a maximum of $52,352, but a ACGR survey found none have done so. The highest stipend is just over $40,000 … with the average at $34,244.”

#RaiseTheStipend

Winto is my flavour of the month (read 2023-2024) as I’ve been making my way through his back catalogue

In no particular order, here are my favourite books from 2024:

Common misconceptions of speciation Abstract. Speciation is a complex process that can unfold in many different ways. Speciation researchers sometimes simplify core principles in their writin

My entire team wrote an opinion paper about Common misconceptions of speciation research. Each section is written by 1-2 team members. The bulk of the writing happened during two writing retreats. It was a lot of fun and I am very happy with the result. academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

Screenshot of X Account deactivation message which reads “Deactivated. Your account is deactivated. Sorry to see you go. #GoodBye”

Finally deactivated my X account 🎉

Figure 3. Plots showing the relative contributions of incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), gene tree estimation error, and gene flow to the observed gene tree discordance, across two datasets and two taxonomic levels The Hyb‐Seq (A–B) and transcriptome (C–D) datasets are represented here by the HYB‐98RT and RNA‐2821RT datasets, respectively. R2 denotes the total proportion of gene tree variation explained by the model. Relative importance with 95% bootstrap confidence intervals is decomposed with the “lmg” method and regressors of log transformations and summed to 100%.

Figure 2. Discordance between nuclear and chloroplast phylogenies for oaks and relatives (A) Cophylogeny showing incongruence between the nuclear ASTRAL (left; HYB‐98RT) and unpartitioned chloroplast maximum likelihood (ML) (right) trees. Tip labels are shown in Figure S15. Clade frequencies of gene trees from the coalescent simulations are shown near the nodes; clade frequencies associated with deep cytonuclear discordances are red and enlarged.

Figure S21. Species networks from reduced-representation datasets of oaks and Fagaceae. A. Optimal network under the “planA” taxon set of Fagaceae using the Hyb-Seq dataset (represented by the HYB-114RT dataset here). B. Optimal network under the “planB” taxon set of Fagaceae using the Hyb-Seq dataset. C. Optimal network under the “planC” taxon set of oaks using the Hyb-Seq dataset. D. Optimal network under the “planA” taxon set of Fagaceae using the transcriptome dataset (represented by the RNA-4853RT dataset here). E. Optimal network under the “planB” taxon set of Fagaceae using the transcriptome dataset. F. Optimal network under the “planC” taxon set of oaks using the transcriptome dataset. Dashed red curved branches denote the minor edge of a reticulate node while solid blue curved branches denote the major edge of a reticulate node. Values next to curved branches denote the inheritance probabilities. A reticulate node with an asterisk denotes that its parents contributed relatively equivalent inheritance probabilities (~ 0.5 vs. 0.5). Abbreviations: sect. CY, sect. Cyclobalanopsis.

Fascinating phylogenomic study of Oak Family by Shui‐Yin Liu et al. (including @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social) showing that hybridization & ILS both generate gene-tree discordance in the family; ILS contributes ~3x as much as hyb'n to discordance in Quercus, but both matter.

doi.org/10.1111/jipb...

Updates to Australian plant taxonomy

Keeping track of new taxonomic changes and species descriptions can be tough, so I've created a living spreadsheet to document recent taxonomic works relating to Australian plants, and provide an easy to access central resource. It will be updated every week or two

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

😮

Very excited to see this tool come out (and just before Christmas). I've been following it on Github and it looks incredible.

"Unicore enables scalable and accurate phylogenetic reconstruction with structural core genes"
📝 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume?

Well it all started when I tried to typeset this resume in LaTeX

YouTube video by Gilat Parag Ersatz (Surogat)- Dusan Vukotic 1961

Here is the Croatian cartoon from the 1960s that served as the inspiration for the ‘Worker and Parasite’ cartoon on The Simpsons.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuOc...