Hervé Sauquet

We've just created an exciting new Phylogenomics Botanist role to join our vibrant team at Botanic Gardens of Sydney and help us build the NSW Plant Tree of Life! Applications close 26 Jan 2026: iworkfor.nsw.gov.au/job/phylogen...

#botanicgardens #nswflora #nswptol #phylogenomics

Great to get this paper out on macroevolutionary trends of the hyperdiverse southwest Australian and eastern Australian floras! @alexskeels.bsky.social

Article is open access and can be downloaded here:
lnkd.in/gaxzYppQ

Don't know what you are looking for? 🔍 We made something ✨ #Shiny ✨ using biodiversity data from {galah} to create location taxon lists for naturalists 🦉🦋🍄🐌🌳
@thebeachcomber.bsky.social @willcornwell.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social

enormous phylogeny of ~700 Grevilleoideae plants plus outgroups with major tribes and fossil calibrations highlighted

New paper out today in @pnas.org presenting near-complete phylogeny of the Grevilleoideae subfamily of Proteaceae plants, representing years of work and huge collaboration from an amazing team - ft. @marcelcardillo.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social @austinmast.bsky.social and many others not on bsky

A world map showing the locations of new plant species discovered through iNaturalist. Each species is represented by a photograph and text explaining the family and year of description.

Check out this new #AJB essay by @thebeachcomber.bsky.social, @hsauquet.bsky.social & @willcornwell.bsky.social!

#Citizenscience records are fuelling exciting discoveries of new plant species

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #iNaturalist #herbarium

Cascading questions for leafless Bossiaea | Botanic Gardens of Sydney Working with stakeholders from different Australian states, geneticists have helped to clarify taxonomy and conservation planning for seven leafless Bossiaea species.

Science in action to support conservation 🌱

When researchers collaborated to investigate the quirky group of peas known as the "leafless bossiaea", the project bounced in more than one unexpected direction.

www.botanicgardens.org.au/discover-and...

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Ever wondered what explains the amazing fruit diversity in the custard apple family (Annonaceae)?
See what we found: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@renskeonstein.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social @ingolfkuehn.bsky.social @josephtobias.bsky.social @tlpcouvreur.bsky.social, and others!

Mónica Carvalho can be seen holding the newly discovered earliest grape from the Western Hemisphere at the dig site in Colombia She has the biggest smile as she's holding the rock to the camera on a hillside.

60 million-year-old seeds reveal that dinosaur extinction paved the way for grapes
www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/s...

Interested in working with us at the Australian National Herbarium as a Curatorial Technician with a focus on eucalypts?

jobs.csiro.au/job-invite/9...
#herbarium #csiro

Latest awesome output from @thebeachcomber.bsky.social PhD work: expert IDBlitzes amplify the value of #citizenscience data (such as @inaturalist.bsky.social)

Out now in @plantspeopleplanet.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1002/ppp3...

(with @tecticornia.bsky.social @julietwege.bsky.social and more)

Evolutionary implications of a deep-time perspective on insect pollination – a new review just published When we think of pollination, we often picture bees buzzing around flowers or butterflies flitting from bloom to bloom. This relationship between plants and pollinators is one of the most well-know…

In a review led by Spanish researchers David Peris and Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, we explored why a deep time perspective on insect pollination is relevant to our current understanding of plant-pollinator relationships. Read more here:
jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/03/12/e...
#pollinators #biodiversity

Excited to see this out!! In this thought-provoking review led by @davidperis.bsky.social and Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente we further demonstrate that insect #pollination was once widespread among #gymnosperms and existed long before the origin of #angiosperms

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Evolutionary implications of a deep‐time perspective on insect pollination Plant pollination by insects represents one of the most transformative and iconic ecological relationships in the natural world. Despite tens of thousands of papers, as well as numerous books, on pol...

📢Paper alert!
Fossil record is fundamental to elucidating the origin and evolution of insect pollination, as well as informing on present-day plant–pollinator interactions.
Check it out in: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
@ibb-botanic.bsky.social @csicdivulga.bsky.social #LabPaleoecology

Preserving Plants - Gardening Australia Clarence explores the brand-new National Herbarium of NSW to learn about the important role that these collections play in safeguarding our plants and understanding pests.

Here's a really nice video from @gardeningaus.bsky.social featuring some of my awesome colleagues and a unique insider view of our state-of-the-art 21st century Herbarium:
www.abc.net.au/gardening/ho...

Happy Mardi Gras!! 🌈
We’re right in the middle of the most exciting time in Sydney, where such massive celebrations of love, diversity, and freedom to be are more important than ever.
#SydneyMardiGras #QueerInSTEM #BotanicGardens

This round, we’re looking for an established researcher with excellent communication skills and an interest to take a leadership role in driving the scientific curation of our new Herbarium at Mt Annan.
#botany #botanicgardens #herbarium #systematics #evolution

We’re hiring again! Our new Leader Systematic Botany role at Botanic Gardens of Sydney is an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive team of 15 scientists working on systematics, phylogenomics, and macroevolution of the Australian flora.
iworkfor.nsw.gov.au/job/leader-s...

Do you work on the 87 #BigPlantGenera that include 25% of all plant species? We are putting together a special issue in
@annbot.bsky.social
for studies investigating Angiosperm genera with >500 species. See the link below for details: shorturl.at/dfsw4

Amorphophallus titanum Big Bloom Bang happening right now at Botanic Gardens of Sydney! Hard to believe all the fame and hype gathered by this little plant over the past week!
#Putricia #Araceae #botany

Very happy to join and support, awesome initiative!

Phylogenomic tree and classification of magnoliids, with photographs of representative species.

Toward a phylogenomic classification of #magnoliids

New #AJB research by Andrew Helmstetter, Zacky Ezedin, Elton John de Lírio, Sylvia de Oliveira, Lars Chatrou, Roy Erkens, Isabel Larridon, @hsauquet.bsky.social et al.

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantsciences #Angiosperms353 #phylogenomics

This was a true collaborative effort led by Andrew Helmstetter, with an awesome group of magnoliid and phylogenomic experts including @tlpcouvreur.bsky.social @larschatrou.bsky.social @isabellarridon.bsky.social

Out now in #AJB @botsocamerica.bsky.social

We used #Angiosperms353 to revisit the phylogeny of one of the most bizarre and fascinating group of flowering plants, exploring the impact of multiple strategies to filter and analyse data, and provide an updated phylogenetic classification for the 21 families down to subfamllies and tribes.

New phylogenomic study of #Magnoliidae: so excited to see this out at last!

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2...

Finally get to squeeze some squirting cucumbers (Ecballium elaterium) IRL 🤩 The name derives from phenomenon that the ripe fruits squirting a stream of mucilaginous liquid containing its seeds as a dispersal mechanism. This vid here is a slow-mo! #iamabotanist #plantjoy #plantsciences 🧪🌾🌱🥒

On the Cover: This issue of IJPS debuts Primers in the Plant Sciences, a series of curated reviews that cover foundational topics and serve as useful first-stop references for scientists at all career stages (see Wadgymar et al., in this issue, pp. 1–2). Top row: Left, simple biosynthetic pathways of linear and angular furanocoumarins (one subclass of chemical defense) from the hydroxycoumarin umbelliferone; right, illustration of a complex of defensive and tolerance traits in plants and herbivores, a result of reciprocal natural selection exerted on each species by the other over evolutionary time. See “Consequences and Costs of Chemical Complexity: The Evolutionary Ecology of Direct Phytochemical Defense against Herbivores” (Blanchard and Holeski, in this issue, pp. 3–14). Bottom row: Left, examples of successive developmental stages of the flower Grevillea banksia R. Br. (Proteaceae), including flower bud, pollen-presenting (“male”) phase, and receptive (“female”) phase; center and right, Campanula sp. (Campanulaceae), showing a pollen-presenting phase and a nonvisited flower in the receptive phase. See “Pollen Transfer within Flowers: How Pollen Is Secondarily Presented” (El Ottra et al., in this issue, pp. 15–31). Flower photos by J. H. L. El Ottra.

A review of 2024 @ijpsjournal.bsky.social, as viewed through covers by our managing editor @journalwrangler.bsky.social

(1/8) We started 2024 highlighting our new series of occasional papers, Primers in the Plant Sciences

#PlantScience

Photo of the inflorescence of this species. The strappy green leaves are visible. The spikes of tiny flowers are subtended by broad, orange bracts.

Freycinetia cumingiana has pseudanthia comprised of showy bracts surrounding the spikes of tiny, unisexual flowers. These pseudanthia are visited by birds, who are the likely pollinators. #Pandanaceae #pseudanthia #botany 🌾🧪🌱

AusTraits floras workshop at Botanic Gardens of Sydney: so thrilled about how it all went!! We invited reps from each Australian state/territory to discuss how online floras could be expanded to display data from a broad range of traits (including ecological, morphological). #austraits #floras

We are very excited about our new Felsenstein Review, by Rosana Zenil-Ferguson and Lee Hsiang Liow, is now out! Check out the full article here 👉 https://buff.ly/41hpKym

Updated herbarium starter pack! Send me deets for others to add. go.bsky.app/J3orEaP