Jim Dalling

There was a mass flowering last year on BCI - seeds take a year to develop and disperse. This year there is one tree flowering - a 'late bloomer'. I am curious to see if it will set seed. There are a lot of South American Tachigali species. Only a small number of species appear to be monocarpic.

Thunderstorms are a major driver of tree death in tropical forests Trees in tropical forests are dying at an increased rate, with consequences for biodiversity, carbon storage, and the global climate. While deforestation is the primary cause of forest loss, intact fo...

Thunderstorms are a major — and growing — threat to tropical trees, reports a new analysis in Ecology Letters led by Cary’s @evangora.bsky.social. Insights are critical to guiding decisions about forest restoration and conservation www.caryinstitute.org/news-insight...

"We are devastated and heartbroken at the loss of our parents, Melissa and Mark. They were the bright lights at the center of our lives, and we can't believe they are gone. Their love for us was boundless. We miss them so much. "We want everyone to know that we are both safe and with loved ones. We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support we have received, and we appreciate your respect for our family's privacy as we grieve. "Our family would like to thank law enforcement for their swift action that saved others and for the coordination across communities that led to the arrest of the man who murdered our parents. We especially would like to thank the officers who were first on the scene to our parents' home and their heroic attempts to rescue our mom and dad. "Our parents touched so many lives, and they leave behind an incredible legacy of dedication to their community that will live on in us, their friends, their colleagues and co-workers, and every single person who knew and loved them. "If you would like to honor the memory of Mark and Melissa, please consider the following: • Plant a tree. • Visit a local park and make use of their amenities, especially a bike trail. • Pet a dog. A golden retriever is ideal, but any will do. • Tell your loved ones a cheesy dad joke and laugh about it. • Bake something — bread for Mark or a cake for Melissa, and share it with someone. • Try a new hobby and enjoy learning something. • Stand up for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace. "Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear. Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect. The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else."

Please read and share this statement from Sophie and Colin Hortman, children of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

(via WCCO reporter Caroline Cummings on X)

Graduate Students Push Back Against Science Funding Cuts Hundreds of graduate students are writing to their hometown newspapers to defend their research, as the Trump administration drastically reduces science funding.

Graduate Students Push Back Against Science Funding Cuts www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/s...

We are looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join an exciting project investigating the effects of bat seed dispersal on plant microbiomes and pathogen dynamics in tropical ecosystems. With @morceglo.bsky.social. More info: jobs.apsnet.org/job/postdoct...

120 million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR budget reconciliation package The bill mandates disposal of over 2 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands; public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 120 million acres, including local recreation areas, wild...

This would be the largest public lands sell-off in modern U.S. history and it's happening with no hearings, no debate, and no public input.

See what public lands would be available for sale:
www.wilderness.org/articles/med...

Infrared imaging shows heat levels in sun-exposed leaves of Alstonia scholaris from the Australian Wet Tropics. As climate change increases temperatures and the severity of heat waves, both natural ecosystems and agricultural plants are increasingly affected by heat. Examining heat responses at cellular, genetic, physiological, and ecosystem scales, this special issue explores how plants sense and respond to high temperatures.

As the world warms, plants in natural ecosystems and agricultural settings find ways to respond to the heat.

In a new special issue of Science, researchers examine how heat affects plants at multiple scales, from the molecular level to the biosphere. scim.ag/44cSw3Z

The biogeography and conservation of Earth’s ‘dark’ ectomycorrhizal fungi In this review, van Galen et al. use global soil metabarcoding databases to evaluate current estimates of the total number of ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungal species on Earth, outline the current state o...

Our paper shows that most ectomycorrhizal fungal species (83% of OTUs) are "dark taxa": species we detect in DNA, but can't match to known species names. We map global "darkspots" - the parts of the world most in need of more research. @spun.earth @ethz.ch www.cell.com/current-biol...

Senior Researchers 60,400 --> 16,900 Other Professionals 14,400 --> 4,100 Postdoctoral Associates 5,500 --> 1,000 Graduate Students 41,500 --> 12,400 Undergraduate Students 37,300 --> 8,000 PreK-12 Teachers 42,900 --> 8,200 PreK-12 Students 128,100 --> 39,400 Total Number of People 330,100 --> 90,000

🚨🚨 Friday night news drop from National Science Foundation!! 🧪

NSF just released its detailed budget request for next year: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

We knew it was going to be bad...and it lives up. Guts direct NSF support for a **quarter million people**

🧵 on some highlights...

JFC

Institutionalizing politicized science The opening months of the Trump administration represent a historic disruption to America’s scientific agencies. Staff have been fired or reassigned in the name of efficiency, resulting in chaos. Gran...

see link for public comment in the article on the proposed policy open until 23 May…“the purpose of Schedule F is to permanently instill the degree of political control over science fueling the sense of fear that pervades those agencies now” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

FYI: The Spencer Foundation, Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have collaborated to offer $25K rapid response grants.

"This rapid response bridge funding opportunity is for scholars and teams whose grants have recently been cancelled by NSF."

The 15% IDC for new NSF grants might be moot. With a 50% budget cut, and existing funding obligations, there may not be any money for new grants anyway.

Free to read - great. If you want to support the Global South then what about free to publish? Tying publication discounts to a country's publishing power index is incredibly naive to the financial barriers our colleagues face. A 55% discount to an Ecuadorean author still = $1350 FEcol pub charge.

Adriana Corrales: Plants Are Not Alone Botany One interviews Dr Adriana Corrales, a researcher fascinated with the intricate relationships between plants and fungi.

In my latest interview for @botany.one, @adricorrales.bsky.social reminds us that plants are not alone; they thrive in association with many other organisms such as fungi and bacteria. #SciComm #PlantScience #Botany 🧪🍄 botany.one/2025/04/adri...

Very common among field biologists working in Panama. I expect there are lots of ticks that can induce this allergy but that it takes multiple exposures to generate sensitivity. I had hundreds of tick bites before I became allergic.

This Tree Wants to Be Struck by Lightning Before a discovery in a Panamanian rainforest, “it seemed impossible that lightning could be a good thing for the trees,” a scientist said.

These trees are into getting shocked.

Dipteryx oleifera towers above the rest of Panama’s rainforest — arboreal lightning rods. They’re more likely to survive ⚡ than their neighbors, giving them a competitive edge.
Read more at: @nytscience.bsky.social:
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/s...

Nitrogen addition alters interactions between ectomycorrhizal host trees and fungal communities in a mixed mycorrhizal tropical rainforest - Plant and Soil Background and aims Interactions among ectomycorrhizal (ECM) trees, fungal communities and ecosystem-scale N availability can drive carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling at the tree scale, but these mec...

Changes to nutrient availability in tropical forests can alter the outcome of competition between ectomycorrhizal fungi and free-living saprotrophs with implications for decomposition and plant nutrient acquisition.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change Understanding the capacity of forests to adapt to climate change is of pivotal importance for conservation science, yet this is still widely unknown. This knowledge gap is particularly acute in high-b...

Are tropical forests in the Americas changing as adaptation to ongoing climate change? Yes, they are!
Are these changes enough to track their suitable climate?
Not quite! Check out our paper in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... to see more of what our network has been working on!

OPEN CALL FOR EDITORIAL SERVICE AT BIOTROPICA

Please consider serving on the Biotropica Editorial Board... we have an open call for service here. forms.gle/F9Lf2qWAB8rv...

All ctenosaurs agree, Biotropica is a great place to publish tropical ecology, evolution, and conservation research!

Being genetically identical to your neighbors does not increase your risks of disease and predation but reduces your ability to mate Eloisa Lasso, Marta Vargas, Andrea Paz This is a Plain Language Summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here. Did you know that the reason why organisms have sex is stil…

📰Published📰 Being genetically identical to your neighbors does not increase your risks of disease and predation but reduces your ability to mate

https://buff.ly/4hbIULb

🧪🌍

Check out our new study led by Abbey Yatsko, we made the most of a fire break clearing to look at the inside of trees on Cape York! We show that termites love to munch on the inside of trees and their largest influence on hollowing is in the bottom of trees! #carbon #termites

Faster than expected: release of nitrogen and phosphorus from decomposing woody litter https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.20362

Job alert in Ecological Remote Sensing of tropical forests at BioEO lab www.jesusaguirre-spatialecology.com @ecioxford.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @oxfordecosystems.bsky.social working with me, @ymalhi.bsky.social @felipemartello.bsky.social, Laura M. Suz at Kew and many more -> Apply! shorturl.at/uM4F0

An Illustrated Key to the Common Temperate Species of Aquatic Hyphomycetes Aquatic hyphomycetes are an ecological group of fungi that play a crucial role in the decomposition of plant litter and in the food webs of streams and rivers. Changes in stream ecosystem functioning ...

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

much like the spores of some aquatic fungi!

Quercus salicifolia tree - volcan Baru

Hi Martin - I would like to join too - representing montane and premontane forests in Panama. Jim

Andean forest Acknowledgement: Quimbaya

🚨 #PhD alert! Can #tropical trees migrate up mountains to track climate change? 🌳🌱⛰️ If they can’t, extinction may follow. Help us answer this question, working in tropical forests in the #Andes. Amazing fieldwork opportunities, & mega team led by @belenfadrique.bsky.social.
tinyurl.com/mr35spbj

Fara Dabhoiwala · A Man of Parts and Learning: Francis Williams Gets His Due The only certainty about the picture is that it shows Francis Williams. No one has ever been able to discover who...

What a story this is! It combines art, 18th-century British and Caribbean history, and astronomy - a detective story that crosses disciplines and centuries, with an appropriately dramatic twist ending. By historian Fara Dabhoiwala in @londonreview.bsky.social. 🧪

Take a look at this excellent array of PhD projects in plant and soil science that are nowopen for applications! Please share with potential students 🤩