Simon Heyes

This is huge! I'm from these old mill towns known as the Red Wall because they were rusted on Labour towns. Starmer thought he was purging the left when he came to power but he just might have set it free

I have yes!! We were out at one of my sites and acidic silica rich rhyolite with Eucalyptus etc and a complete switch to non-Eucalyptus shrubland/grassland as soon as the geology change to limestone. Also lots of strange rare plants in with funny distributions and local endemism

The Antonovics papers on the rapid selection of copper tolerance in Agrostis on historic mine sites in Wales is the classic. It was what first sparked my interest in plants in undergrad geology classes

A little bit of both I reckon

Makes you wonder who the slackers of those undergrad group projects were 😄

My study species are all calcicole plants (only two ultramafic outcrops in Vic) but I've certainly dived into the serpentine veg. This is my fav mind blowing paper so far I reckon.

doi.org/10.1111/j.15...

That looks like a great paper. I'm working on soil specialists and rapid speciation has certainly been reported on some of those as a result of extreme selection. Definitely adding this to my reading list!

In Lancashire where I'm from they'd say doin but tend to not use frew which I tend to associate with the South. But accents in the UK are complicated and you have variation in accents and dialects from town to town. I can tell a Wiganer from a Manc

An early morning sunrise with a few scattered clouds and the the light of the sun at the bottom of the image.

There's not too many upsides to getting up at 4am to measure plant traits but the sun rises aren't too shabby

Takes even longer than 20 years for him

I've been thinking about how Starmer and the Labour Together purge of the left in the party has done the opposite of what they intended. Instead of crushing the left they have liberated it from the shackles of the Labour Party. Fingers crossed for Hannah Spencer in Manchester 🤞

I think there's often a feelgood factor for funding agencies where they throw money at some of these groups and the PR writes itself. I'm not saying all community groups but I've seen some where they've received lots of money and the outcomes have been atrocious.

X’s algorithms are not neutral tools, but an editorial force, shaping real worldviews. And unlike much of what you read on X, this finding is based on rigorous research.

👉 Read the full story: theconversation.com/a-few-w...

That sounds divine! I need more fig trees in my garden

Yup. But not just because of AI. Scholar is the pet project of one of Google's early employees. I can't see it surviving his retirement. OpenAlex is our best alternative, we need to invest in improving their data.

Tomorrow I'll be presenting at #VicBioCon! I've got a speed talk in Plants and Pollinators 1 (at 11:45am) and have a poster that evening at 5pm. Come say hi and ask me about my Acacias! 😊

Jacob, you mention invasion ecology in your hashtags, does this mean some of these forms are invasive?

Acacia paradoxa has a broad SE Australian distribution, occurs across starkly different habitats, and has remarkably variable morphology. Here is a photo snapshot of some of the diversity captured during my honours field work.
#InvasionEcology #Botany #AustralianBotany #Acacia
#PopulationGenomics

Also for the records I am not a gall person but find them endlessly fascinating

Juicy purple green leaf galls in Eremophila deserti near Melbourne, Australia

These weird brown spongy galls appear to affect the follicles of Banksia marginata in western Victoria, Australia.

I am simultaneously excited that there is so much to learn about the natural world and also frustrated that I don't have all the answers now. Two galls I'm seeing and here and there is nothing about them in the literature. Eremophila leaf galls and these spongy Banksia galls demand answers

We're working on a little paper and we know they affect plant health and reproduction a lot but they're also very rare.

Large swollen stem galls. These are usually packed will larvae of this host specific wasp

Here are several years of galls. They form on the newest growth and Banksia can be dated with node counts so we get a good idea of how long they've had this colony of gall wasps

These are previous years galls that are filled with exit holes

Here's some impressive Mesostoa kerri galls on silver Banksia. Because we can roughly date Banksia with node counts we can tell that this Banksia has been infested for several years and because Banksia retain cones for years we also know this individual has not successfully produced any fruit.

I think I missed a few of those myself, Hilary

@jacobpmoore.bsky.social & @em-stevenson.bsky.social you should definitely try and get onto a few starter packs to expand your network.

I'll let them do a proper intro

Welcome and follow these two reprobates @em-stevenson.bsky.social and @jacobpmoore.bsky.social who are working on vry cool and interesting stuff @ La Trobe Uni. Emily is looking at high temperature threshold's for pollen viability and Jacob is working on the cryptic invasion of a common Acacia.

Here's another to blow your mind, Scott

www.jstor.org/stable/23901...

Photo of a scorched landscape and blackened, leafless branches bearing cone-like clusters of capsules. Many capsules are open and gaping.

Australia’s Banksia has fruits that are serotinous, opening after fire. Wildfires clear competing vegetation + deposit nutrients in the soil = good conditions for seedling establishment. 📷: Banksia ornata by davidsando CCBYNC4. #Proteaceae #serotiny #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Even in the same species can have populations that are obligate seeders, epicormic resprouters and clonal resprouters. My Masters study species was hugely variable with epicormic resprouters in grassy woodlands that were weekly serotinous and clonal resprouters in heathland with serotinous fruit

I want a Royal Commission into masculinity and domestic violence - such language, so easy to slip off the tongue, is so utterly unacceptable and unparliamentary. It shows an inherent, deep misogyny, that’s underwrites so much of what in wrong with Australia.