Acer VanWallendael

🔥 If you don't account for missing data someone else will 🔥

I need this on a shirt. Programs that handle missing SNP data when computing PCA usually impute, and you need to be very confident that's actually what you want to happen (it's usually not).

Our EEB department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hiring an assistant professor in evo-devo. See go.illinois.edu/EEBAsstProf for details. Please share!

What a wild plant pathosystem reveals about local adaptation between hosts and pathogens and the implications for cultivated plant pathosystems under climate change Click on the article title to read more.

Really nice new highlight about our recent paper led by @aceraceae.bsky.social. "What a wild plant pathosystem reveals about local adaptation between hosts and pathogens and the implications for cultivated plant pathosystems under climate change" nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This thoughtful commentary gives some really interesting phytopathology context for our New Phytologist paper. Thank you for your words @wheatpath.bsky.social

Procrustean pseudo-landmark methods in Python to measure massive quantities of leaf shape data Premise When examining leaf shapes that are different from one another, it can be difficult to compare both the overall leaf shape and points along the leaf margin in biologically and statistically me...

New work from Josephs lab grad student Asia Hightower
@puffballove.bsky.social
w/ Dan Chitwood & many many others on general, flexible methods for analyzing leaf shape variation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Haploblocks contribute to parallel climate adaptation following global invasion of a cosmopolitan plant - Nature Ecology & Evolution Whole-genome sequences and field experiments focusing on the global invasive forage crop, Trifolium repens, show high levels of genetic variation across continents and parallel signatures of selection...

Whole-genome sequences and field experiments focusing on the global invasive forage crop, white clover, show high levels of genetic variation across continents and parallel signatures of selection in five haploblocks www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hi #evol2025, our paper came out yesterday and I'd love to chat about it. We used an underused tool for studying parasite local adaptation, the Host Reciprocal Transplant, to study switchgrass and its fungal rust.

doi.org/10.1111/nph....

The florigen that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age

Life on the dry side: a roadmap to understanding desiccation tolerance and accelerating translational applications - Nature Communications Desiccation tolerance is an extreme adaptation to water limitation. Here the authors envisage a roadmap to advance desiccation tolerance research, highlight key knowledge gaps, call for standardizatio...

our perspective on desiccation tolerance research is out in
@naturecomms.bsky.social. with nearly forty authors from around the world spanning diverse career stages and disciplines, this work represents a shared vision for the field. let us know what you think!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Oak seedings

Juncus growing in the nursery.

📣Job Announcement!
California Botanic Garden, the largest garden dedicated to #CAnativeplants, is seeking a Nursery Manager to join our team! To view the position click the link: drive.google.com/file/d/1MGcA...
Please share! 🌱

A rearranged Amaranthus palmeri extrachromosomal circular DNA confers resistance to glyphosate and glufosinate Abstract. Some herbicide-resistant weeds become resistant by generating additional copies of specific loci. For example, amplification of the locus encodin

Weeds have evolved plasmids to house herbicide resistance genes (extracellular circular DNA), which is insanely cool. Previously, this was only Roundup resistance (glyphosate), but an amaranth pop. has been found with resistance to glufosinate on the same plasmid.
academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Protein editing using a coordinated transposition reaction Protein engineering through the ligation of polypeptide fragments has proven enormously powerful for studying biochemical processes. In general, this strategy necessitates a final protein-folding step...

Excited to share that our protein editing method from the Muir Lab is now published in @science.org

We believe that protein transposition will enable new biochemical studies of PTMs and open up new intersections of proteins and small molecules

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The VanLab grows!

The Evolution of Locally Adaptive Chromosome Inversions in Mimulus guttatus Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms are ubiquitous across the diversity of diploid organisms and play a significant role in the evolution of adaptations in those species. Inversions are thought to op...

We have a new paper out today, where, among other things, we find evidence that a locally adaptive chromosomal inversion likely trapped an even older inversion along its path to becoming the supergene it is today. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Late-breaking job ad: The Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC, USA) is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Evolutionary Biology!!! More details below. Please repost!

Genetic diversity in locally adapted, weedy, and invasive plants

I have funding available in my lab at NC State for a graduate student interested in plant evolutionary genetics, especially in weeds. Please email me by Dec 20 for full consideration. Details and contact info on the lab website: avanwallendael.github.io/#joining-the-lab

Assistant Professor of Forest Ecophysiology APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, a...

So excited to announce our department is hiring a tenure track position in Forest Ecophysiology! Happy to answer any questions about the position!! Join us in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Penn State!
psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

Thanks Josh!

Got my new head shots back just in time to announce that I'm starting a lab at North Carolina State University in January! I'll be a genetics prof in the Weed Science program, with research centered on evolutionary genomics in weeds and invasive species

Ask me for info! avanwallendael.github.io

Stunning frost flowers on the snakeroots this morning