Mark Hughes

♻️🆓: Phylogeny, biogeography and ecological diversification of New Caledonian palms (Arecaceae)
doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

TAXACOM is being reborn. After the mailing list was abruptly discontinued (and its archives apparently deleted) it is being relaunched in Google Groups groups.google.com/g/taxacom Let us rejoice knowing there is once again a place to endlessly argue about “what is a species?” I’ve missed it.

Neat little cushion of Orthotrichum tenellum

Two cushions of Orthotrichum tenellum on street tree

Leaf of Orthotrichum tenellum under the microscope

Another street tree epiphyte that's becoming more common in London - Orthotrichum tenellum forms small neat cushions with notably long capsules and calyptra. The leaf tips also have a distinctive beak at the end. Another bryophyte taking advantage of the cleaner air!

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

📣The CETAF Scientific Research Working Group is organising an upcoming live webinar:

"What Defines a Species in the Molecular Age? Delimitation and Diagnosis with DNA Barcodes"

📅 13 May | 14:00–16:00 CET
👉Registration is now open:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

#Taxonomy #Systematics

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

NEW reporting from @19thnews.org on the Epstein files shows how academic research funding intersected with women scientists and institutional power shaped by male influence. An important story about accountability, impact and who gets protected -- and who doesn't. 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

For background on the project see "BioNames: linking taxonomy, texts, and trees" (https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj. 190 L) and "Ten years and a million links: building a global taxonomic library connecting persistent identifiers for names, publications and people" (https://doi.org/BDJ.11.e107914 L). Database Statistics Distinct name clusters Names with publications Names with DOls Names with free PDFs Total names 5,464,929 4,496,603 1,782,674 504,962 286,091

Slowly adding content to bionames.org and tweaking the interface. Hope page loads faster now and looks a little better on mobile. Lots of DOIs and PDFs for taxonomic papers, but so much to do. Half a million names linked to DOIs, wish it were more.

February 21, 1993, died on this day aged 105 years, Danish seismologist Inge Lehman.
She discovered that the Earth has a inner core announcing it in 1936 with the shortest title for a paper ever: P' - after the seismic discontinuity between core and mantle shown by the P-waves

TAXON is transitioning to a new publishing system.

Manuscripts currently under review in Editorial Manager will remain there until decisions are made on these papers: www.editorialmanager.com/taxon.

All new submissions need to be sent via Research Exchange: submission.wiley.com/journal/TAX.

Call for Sessions 💡 Share expertise and insights at #TDWG2026, exploring how collections and standards advance the documentation and understanding of #biodiversity.
🗓 Submission deadline: 26 February 2026
👉 Learn more: www.tdwg.org/conferences/...

PhD on Begonia speciation at RBGE/Glasgow! Looking at the genomics of reproductive isolation and how fast it evolves - is it the reason this is one of the largest genera of flowering plants?
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

A composite plate of Begonia elegantifolia, showing leaves and flowers

This is the species that pushed us over the boundary:
Begonia elegantifolia Ritonga, Girm. & Mustaqim fro North Sumatra
doi.org/10.11646/phy...

Homepage of the Begonia Resource Centre, a database for Begonia nomenclature and specimens

Begonia is now up to 2200 accepted species!
padme.rbge.org.uk/Begonia/

YouTube video by Linnean Society The Origin and Evolution of Botanical Spirals | Sandy Hetherington

Interested in Botanical spirals but couldn’t attend my lecture @linneansociety.bsky.social
Don’t worry you can now watch it on YouTube! 👇👇👇
The talk includes an overview of our recent paper on fern fiddleheads @currentbiology.bsky.social
youtu.be/WLHDnjwcPlc?...

GraphCast: AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting Our state-of-the-art model delivers 10-day weather predictions at unprecedented accuracy in under one minute

AI 10 day forecasts massively outperform numerical prediction
deepmind.google/discover/blo...

"Despite harboring around one-third of the world’s fern species, less than 6% of Southeast Asian ferns have been DNA-sequenced" -- here's our response!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

patial and taxonomic coverage of terrestrial plant occurrence data. Georeferenced plant observations, as illustrated by observation dates in Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; the largest biodiversity informatics infrastructure), have increased exponentially over the past 200 years (panels a, b), though the number of species recorded in these databases is reaching saturation (panel c). By integrating additional data sources compiled by Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN; i.e., non-GBIF sources comprising ~15 million records; panel d), the georeferenced plant observations in GBIF can be expanded by an additional ~4 million spatially unique records (panel e) and ~20,000 species (panel f). Still, the gaps in plant distributions warrant our attention: areas in Russia, central Asia, and northern Africa (red colour in panel g) are missing publicly available occurrences. The grey colour in panel (g) represents the presence of plant data, and the black colour represents ice-covered areas

The biodiversity data deluge is here - the equivalent of #MooresLaw but for biodiversity data? "we estimated that the total number of plant distribution records doubles every 17 years and the number of spatially unique records doubles every 21 years." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🌎🧪🦋🦫

Trees in an upland valley in Scotland, UK

I am offering a PhD opportunity at University of Edinburgh as part of the E5 DTP. CASE partner: Forest Research

On the microbial mechanisms of soil carbon cycling in tree-planted upland soils. Application deadline: 6th Jan. Please share with your network.

e4-dtp.ed.ac.uk/e5-dtp/super...

A large triptych of a palm tree, Sabal mexicana, in watercolour

This beautiful triptych of Sabal mexicana has taken over from the titan arum in the foyer of the botanics recently. Wonderful to see this on the way to ones office 😍
www.rbge.org.uk/news/article...
stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/37173

Houseplants as Warhammer 40k units:

HQ: begonias
Troops: pothos
Elite: Philodendron
Fast attack: calathea
Heavy support: monstera delicosia.

The WFO Consortium welcomes engagement by the international taxonomic community to create and join TENs.

Find out more about existing and how to form new TENs.
about.worldfloraonline.org/tens