Karolina Heyduk

In a time of extreme division, I am glad we can be united by one trait: the inability to keep oneself from playing videos on your phone full volume in public spaces.

Worldwide phenomenon.

Wtf. Why not. WHY NOT

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

We’ve bombed Iran. And dismantled our joint terrorism task force. And sent a third of the FBI to help ICE. And gutted the National Security Council. And a drunk guy is in charge at the pentagon. And our intelligence allies probably won’t share intel with us. Because people couldn’t vote for a woman.

AAAAAAAAHH

You don't need to convince me!

lol @ "non grass monocot" it's a twofer - cool because monocot, and cool because Not Grass 😂

Delta: We're sorry about your cancelled flight!

Me: my what now?

Delta: 😇

NSF officials break silence on how AI and quantum now drive agency grantmaking Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

The National Science Foundation is systematically being converted to the National AI and Quantum Research Foundation.

“I see it as the administration exerting political control over what has traditionally been NSF’s ability to fund the best science.”

Some insights into what's going on at NSF

Photo of a desert landscape with some buildings dotting the foreground. The sky at sunset is cotton candy pink.

Last full day at Gobabeb 💔

view of a tree, a bird in the tree, and giant dunes in the background

Not a bad view out the lab window

lol just re-read my skeet, whoops. you know what I mean.

Today is kicked my ass back and had extreme malfunction 😭

No, @jleebensmack.bsky.social is doing a great job in field assisting!

Definitely variation between! Seems to relate to apparent stress (eg leaf coloring) and maybe age? But sample size is small.

They have surprisingly high rates of photo and conductance - odd for plants that get maybe 30mm of rain, and whose roots often can't reach groundwater! So...investigating!

Fig. 1.Diel leaf CO2 uptake of Kalanchoë fedtschenkoi under different light intensity and photoperiod treatments. Net CO2 uptake over 24 h measured for leaf-pairs 5, 6, or 7 of plants exposed to (A) different light intensities and (B) different photoperiods; L and D indicate the duration in hours of the light and dark periods, respectively. The dark period is shaded in grey. The four different CAM phases are indicated in (A). The arrows and lamp symbols indicate the onset of the light period for the different treatments in (B). The results are representative of three biological replicates, with SE<15%.

🌙🌿 RESEARCH 🌿🌙

PPDK is essential to initiate gluconeogenic recovery of storage carbohydrates in CAM photosynthetic species and is identified as a putative regulator of the diurnal processing of malate in CAM – Daems et al.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
#PlantScience 🧪

Photo of a woman wearing a hoodie, with the hood up, standing in front of a Welwitschia plant and a licor 6400.

Awesome morning tracking photosynthesis in a Welwitschia population.

(It was cold in the morning, for like 30 minutes, before the sun made it a furnace.)

Ugh fingers crossed. Weather geeks I follow say winds should start to die down around 10am!

Photo of a licor 6400 chamber head disassembled for cleaning

Kickin it old school in the Namib this week #iykyk

Focusing a bit more on water relations (CAM is hard to measure out here in the remoteness)

Ok actually - I learned from someone today that taproot length in the wild might vary depending on soil type.

The blizzard is so nuts!

Yes! Though this species is quite weakly CAM.

I think garden plants are quite atypical in their root morphology!

Not far! Their taproots don't go down super far, apparently.

Photo of a woman in a bucket hat and sunglasses crouched in front of a giant enormous welwitschia plant

Hey 😎

a polar bear cub is laying in a pile of hay Alt: a bear emerges from a hidey hole looking extremely disheveled

Emerging from a long haul flight: what time is it? What day?