Melissa Whitman

If you are in the Portland (OR) area, I will be giving a talk this week at PSU on the tropical-temperate forest ecotone in Bhutan. Thursday 10/9, 3:30-4:25, Cramer Hall room 53. Open to the public. #Bhutan #biogeography #Rhododendron #ecotone #forest #ecology #Himalayas #PDX #mountains

Been busy writing, apologies for my hermit-like tendencies as of late.

Check out Rhododendron taxifolium or R. ericoides! Their leaves are needle like.

rhodygarden.org/unique-folia...

Showing off our figure of global conifer leaf-widths & leaf silhouettes highlighting that conifers can be broad-leaved & angiosperms can be narrow/ needle-leaved! 🍃

Our paper: tinyurl.com/mss2me7v
@newphyt.bsky.social

@vallicrosah.bsky.social @botanykat.bsky.social & Matilda Brown

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Ancient poop yields world’s oldest butterfly fossils Tiny wing scales suggest the proboscis evolved 100 million years before flowers

Oldest known fossil evidence of lepidopterans (butterflies & moths), from the Triassic (~236 mya) of Argentina! Scales from the wings of these insects were preserved in dicynodont coprolites, & were likely on plants eaten by the dicynodonts. www.science.org/content/arti... #PoopScience 🧪💩🪨🦋

Open, Reproducible and Transparent Science in Ecology Course on reproducible workflows to manage, produce, use, and reuse FAIR data

Interested in #OpenScience, #reproducibility, #FAIRdata, #GBIF, #biodiversity data, and #AI? In November, we are organizing a course for early career ecologists in the home of the reindeer! 🌱🏔️🐑🦌🦋🦇🐞🌾💻
www.uib.no/en/rg/EECRG/...

A colorful bird with green and brown plumage perches on a branch, its long tail ending in two racket-shaped feathers. The background is a soft blur of green foliage.

I was sitting quietly in the forest this morning, watching a Royal Flycatcher nest when this wonderful Keel-billed Motmot perched near me for a few minutes. These are one of the toughest motmots. They're quiet, small, and love the dark forest. At @tapirvalley.bsky.social

#costarica #birds #nature

Any tips for writing in the summer? Nice days outside, yet computer time awaits. I miss the rain.

Convention Logo for "Rhododendron Research Network Rockin' Around the Clock May 29th-30th, 2025". The image shows a black and white clock with colorful Rhododendron flowers at 12, 3, 6 and 9 representing the major clades of Rhododendron. At twelve we see a large elepidote truss with 8 hot pink flowers and dark red flare, at 3 we see a vireya truss, four yellow tubular flowers with a flared orange throat. At 6 we have a pentanthera, or deciduous azalea truss, two large star-shaped red-orange flowers, behind them are the unopened flowers which are shaped like a claw pointing toward the sky. Last at 9 is the Rhododendron clade, or Lepidotes. Five large Star shaped flowers with lavender petals and hot pink sitgma and stamen

Rhododendron Research Network
Virtual International Convention
May 29-30 2025

Rockin' Around the Clock
Visit the world's major Rhododendron biodiversity regions

Physiology, horticulture, ecology, evolution, conservation

For a general audience

Registration
medeiroslab.com/2025-virtual...
🧪🍁🌺🌱🌏🌐🌿

A woman with brown hair wearing glasses smiles in front of a wall of purple rhododendron blooms

Rhododendron versteegii, a tropical epiphytic Rhododendron of Section Schistanthe, also known as Vireyas. Two small flowers are photographed at close range, they are pendent bell shaped flowers, with long red throats and a flare at the bottom accented by patches of bright yellow

2025 Rhododendron Virtual Convention
NORTH AMERICA SESSION ​
May 29th 9am-3:30pm EDT​
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. Melissa Whitman​
Investigation of flower characteristics and pollinator guilds across elevational and longitudinal gradients​
#PlantBiology 🌏🧪🌱🍁🌺🌐
Register at medeiroslab.com/2025-virtual...

Thus far I do not like the 2025 bingo card of stupid events.

@iite-ecotheory.bsky.social

📆Join us next Tuesday for our next free online seminar: Uli Brose (iDiv) will present:

⭐The internet of nature: integrating food webs with information flow⭐

Zoom link: iite.info/seminar/
Global Times: www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/f...

See you there!
🧪,🌍,#ecoevo

Thanks, I was reading over misc papers and noted that most mentioned datasets w/ a signal close to 1 (and then worried about my data). I will look into tip.fog. My guess is that low signal reflects the direction of spp. range expansion downwards (e.g. upper elev had sig. values ~1, lower elev ~ 0).

Yay for Cynorkis, lovely little orchids

green graphic with various biological drawings

🎥 Better than the original: New SQL-based service enables download of occurrence data cube

GBIF has enabled an easy-to-use service for creating and downloading species occurrence cubes based on GBIF-mediated data.

Collaborators: @b-cubed.eu led by @inbo.be

gbif.link/data-cubes

Another hOUwie pondering @omearabrian.bsky.social... when choosing factors, does it matter if there is strong vs weak phylogenetic signal (Pagel's lambda or Blomberg's k)? My continuous factor has a lambda close to zero, would this cause problems? The signal for the discrete character is unknown/TBD

Within-species floral evolution reveals convergence in adaptive walks during incipient pollinator shift - Nature Communications During evolution, how adaptive walks cross fitness valleys remains unclear. This integrative study on monkeyflowers reveals that convergence in large steps (floral color and gene expression) drives a ...

Really excited to say that my lab's paper on color transitions in Mimulus sect. Erythranthe is out! We found that some traits demonstrate evolutionary convergence in phenotype & genotype, while others are divergent, & that - as Bob Vickery found - bees prefer yellow!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks, that makes a little more sense for why the process takes so long (at least compared to other random shuffling techniques that I am more familiar with) and what goes on in the black box

An orchid on the cover of the March issue of Nature Plants.

The March issue is now fully online:
www.nature.com/nplants/volu...

Four-part graphic showing leaf dry mass per area (LMA) central moments among differing climate types.

Global patterns in community-scale #leaf mass per area distributions of extant woody non-monocot #angiosperms and their utility in the #fossil record

New #AJB research by Alexander Lowe, Dana Royer, Daniel Wieczynski et al.

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... @stromberglab.bsky.social #botany #plantscience

The botanist Al Gentry changed tropical ecology and helped create the global science of today.

This new article celebrates Gentry's unique innovations, achievements and lasting influence, more than 30 years after his untimely death.
rainfor.org/wp-content/u...
annals.mobot.org/index.php/an...

Nice, I did research on some of the orchids of (granite) outcrops in the highlands many years ago. Really interesting area of the globe.

Yet another #hOUwie question @omearabrian.bsky.social does the program work via changing or reconstructing the branching of the tree (but keeping discrete tips constant) or is it the other way around (keep the tree constant but shuffle the discrete tips)?

Werifesteria Old English (v.) to wander longingly through the forest in search of mystery

Old-growth, fire-resistant Douglas-firs marked for logging as part of the Paul's Payoff timber sale, on the BLM's Medford District (sw Oregon). Square this w/the agency's official statement that "they don't log old-growth"...?

Honey bee on red maple flowers

Spring is here!
(Well some places not quite VT)

We’re getting 2025 observations for our Pollinator Interactions on Plants project!

We know much more about herbaceous flowers than we do tree flowers but trees are incredible floral resources! Watch your trees and submit data to help us learn more!

Growing amongst the canopy would allow for similar light levels as upper montane shrublands, despite slow growth and shorter heights as compared to other woody flora. With prelim results, there is strong phylogenetic signal at the upper elevational boundaries but not the lower, which is interesting

Which is the most recent area of establishment, which would explain the upwards movement results. Simultaneously the genus has shifted from terrestrial to epiphytic growth forms, which facilitates downwards expansion into tropical rainforests, but with loss of tolerance to freezing conditions. 3/n

Counter to most woody plants, they originated in temperate latitudes and recently expanded into the tropics, most likely colonizing montane areas first because of similarity of temperatures. However, the Sundaland bioregion has fewer mountains with shorter summits, as compared to Sahul (PNG) 2/n