Maya Zomer

The desert is getting too hot for Joshua trees. Can we just … move them? To protect the southwest’s iconic Joshua trees, scientists are tinkering with their genetics and searching for climate havens in—and sometimes outside of—their existing habitat.

Really good overview of plans to help Joshua trees survive climate change, on National Geographic, with some description of a project I'd only heard rumored, which might aaaaalmost count as what we call assisted migration

www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/...

Are you a community ecologist interested in fire ecology? Come join our group! Postdoc position for project FEVER, that aims to understand how fire affects biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and biogeochemical cycles in Mediterranean forests @umramap.bsky.social.

One of the graphics of the paper on Anthyllis cytisoides resprouiting after drought, showing model predictions and observations of the data analysed in 2022 and 2023; fire occurred in 2021. For flowering and fruiting, the negative effects of drought are stronger on unburned plants (A and C). Burned plants produced nearly four times more flowers than unburned plants (B), and had a higher seed set and heavier seeds than unburned plants in both years (D and E).

Fire buffers drought impacts on reproduction in a resprouting shrub
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Under drought, burned plants had ⬆️prob. of flowering, produced +flowers, set +seeds & heavier seeds, than unburned
Saiz-Blanco et al @oikosjournal.bsky.social

🧪🌍🔥🌿🪴🌾🌱 Anthyllis

🔥 Postdoctoral Opportunity | Fire, Seeds & the Cerrado 🌱
The Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology (UNESP, Brazil) is offering a postdoc position to study how fire regimes and climate warming shape seed traits and germination in Cerrado species.
👉 Learn more: tinyurl.com/hf9yd98f
#Ecology #Traits

Fig. 1.Location of the study area (boxed region in inset map) in the Iberian Peninsula, showing the gradient of historical aridity (lower aridity index values are indicative of less aridity); location of field populations (left map) of Anthyllis cytisoides (n=6, brown circles) and Globularia alypum (n=10, teal triangles); and location of common garden seed provenances (right map) of A. cytisoides (n=4) in Low aridity (blue circles) and High aridity (red circles) areas. Borders in the inset map are countries, and in main maps are provinces.

🔥 RESEARCH 🔥

Shrub resprouting depends on pre-disturbance condition, with aridity, soil fertility & fire history as secondary drivers. Repeated disturbance reduces resprouting, & adult plants are more resilient under low water conditions - Zomer et al.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
#PlantScience 🧪

Fig. 1.Resprouting plants differ in their success in resprouting post-fire as well as in the vigour of resprouting shoots. Some plants may (A) not survive the fire and will not resprout (plant 1), or will successfully resprout and subsequently die (plant 2), while yet others will resprout but with differing degrees of vigour, as evidenced by different crown heights and volumes (B–D). The images are the California Mediterranean-type climate region shrub, Adenostoma fasciculatum Hook. & Arn. (Rosaceae), during the first winter post-fire. (Photo credit: A.L. Jacobsen.)

🌿🔥 INSIGHT 🔥🌿

✍️ "Legacies of stress and altered disturbance regimes threaten shrubland resilience" - Jacobsen & Pratt comment on recent research by Zomer et al.

Insight 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
Research 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪

El CIDE (CSIC, Valencia) está buscando una persona candidata para solicitar una beca Predoctoral de la Generalitat Valenciana, con la idea de trabajar en fauna y fuego en nuestro grupo de investigación (EvoFire, CIDE). Interesados contactar con Roger Colominas colominasciuro _at_ csic.es

CIDE busca persona interesada en solicitar beca predoc de la Generalitat Valenciana (tinyurl.com/34jbccyr) para trabajar en Fauna y Fuego (CIDE CSIC Valencia)
🧪🌍🔥🦎
@ccbiologiquesuv.bsky.social @uv.es @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @ucciuv.bsky.social @crueuniversidades.bsky.social @eco-aeet.bsky.social

Infographics: Mediterranean lizards in recently burned areas rapidly develop lighter coloration, as a thermoregulatory response

Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination of adult lizards in ~1-year postfire showing dissimilarities between burned and unburned in terms of coloration.

Rapid postfire color shift in a Mediterranean lizard
@jzoology.bsky.social

#Lizards inhabiting recently burned areas display lighter coloration, as a #thermoregulatory response
zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧪🌍🔥🦎📏 #trait #fauna #zoology #wildfire #fireecology #fire

Congrats Kristin Davis for her #ecology research that challenges the #NicheConservatismHypothesis: the theory that a species' ecological niche (conditions where individuals can survive and reproduce) remains stable over space & time.

🐦 Findings: bit.ly/3LeZyOL #Europeanstarling #housesparrow

Our Global Wildfire Collective Spatial Data Gateway is here! Intended for sharing wildfire-related data, maps, models, tools, and publications.

Explore now!
globalwildfirecollective.databasin.org

#GlobalWildfireCollective #ConsBio #DataBasin #FireData #WildfireData #Wildfire #Fire #FireResearch

🙌 congrats!

Happy to share that our new paper is now joined by an insight piece from Anna L Jacobsen & R Brandon Pratt giving context on Mediterranean shrub resprouting 🌿🔥

academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

plus a blog post summarizing our article! 👇

🔥Are you investigating how plants respond to shifting fire regimes? Submit to our new Special Collection🌱
Title: "After the fires: Plant responses and resilience under shifting fire regimes"
📖 Submit by 30 Sept 2025.
🧪 Details 👉 www.publish.csiro.au/bt/content/C...
#Fire #Botany #Plantscience

Phenotypic rebuilding after fire: Understanding within‐individual variability in a Mediterranean shrub This paper shows that burned resprouting individuals of Anthyllis cytisoides differed significantly in phenotype, global cytosine methylation and the relationship between floral phenotype and fitness...

Fire alters the phenotype of individual plants, potentially through epigenetic mechanisms
Saiz-Blanco, @cmhmaliani.bsky.social et al @journalofecology.bsky.social
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧪🌍🔥🌿🌳🌾 botany #ecoevo #plantbiology traits @cideinvestiga.bsky.social @dicv.csic.es

Resprouting paper by @mayazomer.bsky.social et al. now online with a temporal OA link

🧪🌍🔥🌳🪴🌾 Anthyllis cytisoides & Globularia alypum #PlantBiology #SEM #botany

academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

bsky.app/profile/jgpa...

Image of the Copper River in Alaska surrounded by boreal forests and mountains. Credit: national park service

🎉 Congrats to @lucialayr.bsky.social on our team for publishing new research on how #ClimateChange and increasing disturbances, like #wildfires, are impacting boreal forests. Explore Lucia's findings: bit.ly/4miqme3 🌲

@tum.de @anjarammig.bsky.social g.bsky.social @egu.eu
📸 National Park Service

Image of a crop of Joshua trees in the California desert, with a large boulder and mountains in the background

🌎 We're #Hiring a full-time #DataAnalyst! Apply now & share with your networks. First review is 4/29: bit.ly/DSE-Hiring-D...

This role will be integral to our work w/ the National Park Service. You'll analyze and prepare vegetation monitoring data and get to work with an amazing group of people!

Image of a healthy agricultural field with many rows of green crops underneath a blue sky with scattered clouds.

🌱 DSE is #Hiring! Are you a (current or soon-to-be) postdoc with experience in #DataScience, #Agroecology, #AgriculturalEconomics, and/or #AgriculturalPolicy? Apply by 3/15: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04804

Real-time collaboration and collaborative editing for GIS workflows with Jupyter and QGIS The QGIS open-source project is a cornerstone in the geosciences ecosystem, providing robust tools for spatial data analysis and…

Announcing JupyterGIS 🌍 🌐 🎉

Real-time collaboration for #GIS workflows with #Jupyter and #QGIS

@qgis.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy @jupyter.org

blog.jupyter.org/real-time-co...

Anthyllis cytisoides

A good example of a "torch" plant, sensus Bond & Midgley (1995 Oikos, Kill thy neighbour), is Anthyllis cytisoides (Fabaceae) growing in Mediterranean shrubland. Calderona Nat Park, Valencia

🧪🌍🔥🌳🌿 wildfire botany @plantscience

🎉 🌎 🪐 I'm thrilled to announce GeoJupyter, an effort to imagine and build rewarding new user experiences for working with geospatial data in JupyterLab!

🤗 I hope to see you in an upcoming community meeting or in our Zulip chat (see the post for links)!

geojupyter.org/blog/2025010...

Fire in Built Environments (Special Episode: LA Fires) with Alexandra Syphard Join me and Dr. Alexandra Syphard as we discuss what makes some neighborhoods more fire prone than others, the Santa Ana Winds, defensible space, the massive differ…

Interested in SoCal and the #wildfires in LA? You can listen to my conversation with the wonderful Michelle Fullner @michellefullner.bsky.social in yesterday's Golden State Naturalist podcast (w/ many other episodes well worth the listen).
www.goldenstatenaturalist.com/fire-in-buil...