Stacey D. Smith

I just got a call from my rheumatologist. Because of the changes to Medicaid, which no longer reimburses telemedicine appointments, I can either pay out of pocket or drive two hours away every three months, which is not possible for me most of the year due to my work schedule.

Yep, and I've been writing back to tell folks this in the nicest way I can think of (e.g., Prospective advisors want to hear *your* words; that's the only way we can help you figure out if this lab/program is good fit).

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Unsolicited listicle: My list of the most criminally underused/underappreciated phylogenetic comparative methods. Note, I am not involved in ANY of these methods; but I see them as things people are often asking of comparative data but have been surprised at how infrequently they have been cited.

The SSE logo. Three Evolution journal covers. Text: Open Call, Associate Editors, deadline September 30, evolutionsociety.org.

Now seeking associate editors for 2026! AEs receive free membership in SSE and free registration to the annual Evolution meeting. Indicate your interest in this short form by September 30: forms.gle/JwAmeM4YV9Fv...

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

We have just cross the $10,000 mark. Let's keep pushing to make that $15K goal! Thanks everyone for standing up for the botanical sciences! #ADayforBSA

🌿 'A Day for BSA' (day-for-bsa.botany.org/2025) is this Wednesday!

Join us as we celebrate 130+ years of advancing botanical science, and then help us reach our campaign goal of $15,000 raised for the BSA Endowment with a gift of any amount.

Give today!
crm.botany.org/civicrm/cont...

#ADayforBSA

Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is hiring a Directory of the Herbarium

The Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is Hiring!

We are searching for a Director of the Oregon State University Herbarium and applications are welcomed at the ranks of assistant, associate, or full professor.

Big news! We are recruiting a postdoc to work on tomatillo evolution: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta.... The clade containing tomatillos and its allies (ca 300 spp) has evolved lantern fruits at least 25 times - we want to know why! Join us @rociodeanna.bsky.social & @caschenck-bio.bsky.social

Oh we were the lucky ones to work with @ixchelgr.bsky.social!! And now we are more confident than ever that the nightshade berries are OLD, not like Eocene old, but Cretaceous Dinos-ruled old. Makes sense though, there are over 2K (some times delicious) species in the berry clade!

The cover of the July-August issue of Applications in Plant Sciences. The cover image shows an artist’s depiction of the application of large language models (LLMs) in plant metabolic research. Here, the stylized tree—with leaves bearing diverse phytochemical structures, superimposed on representations of scientific article abstracts—represents the organization of the vast array of known plant chemical–plant species connections within the context of the plant tree of life. Image credit: Jenna Armentrout created this image in Adobe Illustrator using hand-drawn materials.

The #AppsPlantSci special issue "Advances in analyzing and engineering plant metabolic diversity" is online!

Thanks to editors @kiratiedge.bsky.social, Gaurav Moghe, @iochromaland.bsky.social & Federico Roda

Check out the intro: bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #PlantMetabolism

Martinez-Gomez Lab Plant Evo-Devo

A little belated but I've started a faculty position at Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology department at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social. I'm absolutely stoked! I'll be recruiting at all levels and will be at #Botany2025

Reach out!

www.martinezgomezlab.com

🧪 UPDATE: All 63 House appropriators will meet **this Thursday** about science funding levels.

They'll deliberate on the proposed multi-billion dollar cut to NSF's budget ($9.0B --> $7.0B).

If you think that's bad for our country, here's who to call: appropriations.house.gov/about/member...

I'm back home with my dad and have thoughts about being an Indigenous scientist and academic. I'm writing this in real time so it might get disrupted and will have typos.

I am fairly successful by academic standards. I have a tenure track job, wrote papers, have grant funding, mentor students.

Novel production of structurally diverse and sticky defense metabolites on wild tomatillo fruits Plants have evolved a structurally diverse chemical repertoire to mediate various environmental interactions. Yet, little is known about the chemical complexity and metabolic pathways across many plan...

We identified a novel location for acylsugars, on the fruit surface, widely distributed across the Physalis genus. Paves the way for understanding the cell types and regulation responsible to fruit-surface localized acylsugars in collab with @iochromaland.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sloan Lab Welcome! Our research focuses on the evolutionary process at the molecular level. In particular, we investigate how a mixture of natural selection and non-adaptive forces create and maintain the amazi...

Please share! Our lab is recruiting a PhD student to join us starting fall 2026. Our group is broadly interested in plant molecular evolution and comparative genomics. More info about our lab and grad programs at Colorado St. is available on our lab website.

sites.google.com/site/danielb...

Subcommittee Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding.

Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24.

See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it.

🧵 1/3

a close up of a carnivorous plant with a bee inside of it Alt: a close up of a venus fly trap closing around an insect

North Carolina Botanical Garden (Chapel Hill, NC) is recruiting for a Conservation Botanist!

🎓 Relevant post-Bacc degree req'd
⌛ full time, 2.5-year grant funded position contingent upon additional funding
📨 apps due 7/18

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/303...

#botanyjobs #plantconservationjobs

Four review requests in my inbox this morning. The one I accepted? Society journal.

Our Societies consistently reinvest in our communities in ways the glossies never will. And that makes me invest in them.

Crockett: How is it that you can explain that we still are running up the credit card and we have nothing to show for it except for the fact that we won't have food on the tables and we won’t have health care.

Indiana public colleges cut almost 20% of degrees Public Indiana colleges and universities have eliminated 19 percent of their degree programs to meet requirements added to the state’s budget, according to the Commission for Higher Education.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

In short, no wonder fungal infections are so hard to treat. If selection pressure favors resistance, they seem to have multiple ways to do it.

But there are tons of other resistant strains that have been recovered from clinical cases (that is, patients) and they don't have these same mutations. They resist drugs with other genes and other mutations.

In other words, geneticists have been studying particular genes targeted by antifungals (mainly azoles) and particular mutations in those genes. And all in the lab rat strain of Candida albicans.

My yeast genomics grad student Kyle and his collaborators at the Pasteur just posted our GWAS study -- the cool takehome is that the variants involved in resistance in diverse Candida strains are generally NOT what has been studied in lab strains 🫣
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Full video here, originally shared by DW. What Jeremy says is exactly right—clear, urgent, and deeply important. Cuts to science affect everyone, sooner or later, everywhere. Illness knows no ideology, no borders. This concerns us all. Watch, reflect, share, discuss.

bsky.app/profile/deni...

Dr. Rocío Deanna with shoulder-length wavy brown hair wearing a black sleeveless top stands in front of a presentation screen. The screen displays a colorful slide with circular diagrams and text.

🌿 Meet Dr. Rocío Deanna,@rociodeanna.bsky.social, a botanist tracing nightshade evolution from ancient fossils to modern ecosystems! Her work bridges paleobotany & phylogenetics to unlock Solanaceae secrets.

wp.me/pdRZhH-lYF

#Botany #PlantScience 🧪