Brian J. Enquist

YouTube video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell Trees Are So Weird

Each year, I teach "Evolution of Plant Form and Function" to undergraduates - I've struggled to find good synthetic out-of-class materials - until recently. This is such a superb overview of the functional and physiological overview of land plant evolution www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSch... 🧪🌾🌐 #botany

Imagine machine-learning tools like this that crawl the ecological literature and extract semantic links like: Species–Interaction–Species or Trait–Influence–Function or even Environment–Affects–Species A structured, searchable knowledge graph for biodiversity 🧪🌐🌾

SemMedDB: a PubMed-scale repository of biomedical semantic predications Abstract. Summary: Effective access to the vast biomedical knowledge present in the scientific literature is challenging. Semantic relations are increasing

A fascinating & massive dataset - SemMedDB: a PubMed-scale repository of biomedical semantic predications - a machine-built map of how ideas in biology & medicine connect - SemRep reads articles and pulls out linked statements: Subject – Predicate – Object academic.oup.com/bioinformati... 🧪

collage of photos from a networking event

⚡The GBIF Indigenous Data Governance task group led by
@1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social is seeking inputs to help inform and define future work on Indigenous data rights, interest, governance and sovereignty.

Contribute to the survey! 🔗
gbif.link/Indigenous-d...

@localcontexts.bsky.social

interesting tidbit I learned from Dr. Joey Blankenship… soil health indicators are all based on East coast ecosystems … there are NO soil health indicators for arid & semi arid ecosystems despite 60% (and growing) of the worlds food production occurs in arid ecosystems

A horizon scan of biological conservation issues for 2026 We present outcomes from our 17th horizon scan of issues potentially impacting global biodiversity conservation in the next decade. Issues are novel, or represent a significant step-change in impact, and are currently not well-known or understood within the conservation community. Our panel of 26 scientists, practitioners, and policymakers scored an initial list of 96 issues, discussed the highest ranked 35 issues at a workshop, and identified the 15 top-ranked issues. This year, technology innovations, including low-power optic artificial intelligence (AI) chips and tiny machine learning (TinyML) models, could revolutionize biodiversity monitoring. We highlight impacts from changes in land-use driven by appetite-suppressing pharmaceuticals and the unknown effects of mirror biomolecules. Highlighting these issues may increase awareness of any impacts on global biodiversity conservation.

Online now: A horizon scan of biological conservation issues for 2026

The phenotypic spaces of Arabidopsis thaliana F2s vs. wild accessions. The results shown correspond to one of the 10 hypervolume calculations. Left: Trait hypervolumes based on the first three principal component analysis (PCA) dimensions (with opaque dots representing observed data points, and semitransparent small dots representing uniformly distributed random points generated by the algorithm used for hypervolume computation). Hypervolumes with size equivalent to the mean of the 100 hypervolumes generated by resampling per group (F2s vs. accessions) are shown. Right: Trait variation within the phenotypic spaces of A. thaliana F2s (blue) and wild accessions (red) considering the first three PCA dimensions of trait hypervolumes. Hypervolume centroids, observed data points, and uniformly distributed random points generated by the algorithm used for hypervolume computation are depicted by large circles, opaque dots, and semitransparent small dots, respectively. Hypervolumes with size equivalent to the mean of the 100 hypervolumes generated by resampling per group (F2s vs. accessions) are shown. LA, leaf area; LDMC, leaf dry matter content; LNC, leaf nitrogen content; SLA, specific leaf area.

Why do we observe some plant #phenotypes but not others? This study explores the multivariate #PhenotypicSpace of a widely distributed #plant species to reveal how interplays between population history & natural selection shape phenotypic diversity in #Arabidopsis @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43Z8IWi

ICYMI: Newly issued waivers allow hundreds of miles of new border infrastructure — including double walls, patrol roads, and industrial lighting — in the last open corridors for jaguars, ocelots and dozens of other animals moving between the U.S. and Mexico.

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

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.

Breaking

The University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center (WCC) has tonight confirmed a brand-new jaguar in the United States, Jaguar #5, never before identified, just days after the Trump administration’s new double border wall construction waivers (see below).

Testing the thermal physiology, habitat and competition hypotheses for elevational range limits in four tropical songbirds | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Restricted elevational ranges are common across tropical montane species, but the mechanisms generating and maintaining these patterns remain poorly resolved. A long-standing hypothesis is that specia...

Check out our new paper in @royalsociety.org testing mechanisms behind elevational range restriction in tropical montane songbirds! ⛰️🦜🌳

Backstory: when i first visited Central America in the early 2010's i was struck with elevational ranges of birds..

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Colorado has wolves again for the first time in 80 years. Why are they dying? A controversial reintroduction program is off to a messy start.

Colorado brought wolves back for the first time in 80 years, but now a few years into the historic reintroduction, many of them are dead.

Restoring predators is never simple and the real test is just beginning.

@benjij.bsky.social for @vox.com: www.vox.com/climate/4700...

These generous travel awards are still available for applications! Please share with your networks, the deadline is coming up on December 5th!

Seems like a reasonable theory to me

Check out our recent work led by austindelacruz.bsky.social
Assessing the allometric scaling of seed mass and fruit mass and tests several hypotheses about the influence of evolutionary history and seed dispersal mode on these patterns royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #allometry 🧪🌐

Congratulations Jonathan Lenoir @jonlen.bsky.social !

These are the most delicious cities on Earth — National Geographic UNESCO’s Cities of Gastronomy show how memory can be an ingredient—and taste a form of survival.

Ah, #Tucson is indeed a tasty town apple.news/AhmYhqgK-ScS... 🌵 www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic...

Allometry and phylogeny of within-diaspore biomass allocation: A global analysis https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41290152/

Check out our latest publication from the #FREE group at #CESAB taking a functional and trait perspective on classic metapopulation ecology led by @nmouquet.bsky.social 🧪🌐

Ecological winners: Why some species dominate the planet Analyzing plant dispersion data from across the globe, researchers at the University of Arizona found that the most abundant species have adapted to tolerate a wide range of climates. Their findings c...

news.arizona.edu/news/ecologi...

The West’s vanishing porcupines - High Country News Scientists are racing to figure out why porcupines are disappearing from their former stomping grounds.

The West’s vanishing porcupines www.hcn.org/articles/the... 🌐🧪

Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Finally a thread that intersects with the insights and expertise of @chrisklausmeier.bsky.social and @maitner.bsky.social

Some unique anatomical scaling relationships among genera in the grass subfamily Pooideae The cellular structure and arrangements of leaves can help explain how plants survive in different climates, but most studies that analyse these traits are

♻️Some unique anatomical scaling relationships among genera in the grass subfamily Pooideae by Daniel Spitzer and co-authors

Full #openaccess
👉 doi.org/10.1093/aobp...

#PlantScience

Scholar Labs Early Review: Google Scholar Finally Enters the AI Era Generated by Nano-Banana Pro from text of this blog post

Or course the big bomb would be Google scholar coming in. They did just launch Scholar labs but that's deep search not deep research... But if they change their mind...
aarontay.substack.com/p/scholar-la... (7)

screen cap of header of linked article

"Bill Gates' climate comments are a distraction" | My new commentary for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

📣 Job Opportunity: Plant Conservation Post Doctoral Associate (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)🌿

🌎 Escondido, CA
🧑‍💻 Using SDMs, plant collections, monitoring, & env. datasets, identify plant conservation action priorities in seed collections and translocations for CA rare plants
⌛ 3y FT
💸 $87k

Ancient fossil reveals how plants and fungi first developed on land | Natural History Museum A new fossil fungus discovered in Scotland shows evidence of plants and fungi sharing nutrients to survive on land.

A new fossil fungus discovered in Scotland shows evidence of plants and fungi sharing nutrients to survive on land.

The fossil, more than 400 million years old, offers hints about the origin of one of the greatest partnerships in the history of life on Earth.

www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Background: a chalkboard scattered with school supplies. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution T. H. Huxley Award, applications due February 2.

The T. H. Huxley Award recognizes an outstanding evolution education resource and provides funding for the awardee to attend the Evolution or NABT conference to present their work! Apply by February 2nd: bit.ly/2kP2pPM

👍 Nice one …