Christopher Dick

Come join us in Corvallis! Great colleagues, a wonderful location for plant science of all types, with the added benefit of the beautiful surroundings of Oregon!

cypress tree with 30 foot diameter trunk

Following the fantastic #ATBC2025 meeting in Oaxaca I visited the Tree of Tule, a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) with the world's stoutest trunk. It's highly buttressed but even after smoothing it is thicker than the largest sequoia with a smoothed diameter of 30.8 feet. #bigtrees

Herbarium director position opening at Oregon State University ‪@osu-herbarium.bsky.social‬ Great opportunity for herbarium- and field-trained botanists at any rank. bpp.oregonstate.edu/bpp/about/op...

Heading to Oaxaca for #ATBC2025 ? Make sure you stop by our symposium for all things leaf temperature, heat tolerance, and tradeoffs across climate gradients 🌿💧🌡️

#NExTropics symposia at #ATBC2025 find out the latest from nutrient addition experiments from across the tropics

#ATBC2025 started. More than 1000 participants are in the room.

There almost certainly are cryptic species and a good amount of hybridization with other Eschweileras

picture of tagged tree of Eschweilera coriacea

I'll be talking about hyperdominant tropical tree species at #ATBC2025 in #Oaxaca, including some recent work on Eschweilera coriacea, which despite being possibly the most common tropical tree in the world (~5 billion trees in the Amazon basin) can be hard to identify and is poorly studied.

To Whomever vandalized the Peony Garden at the Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor last night:

There is so little beauty in our world right now. You are making the world a more cruel and ugly place. You are not helping.

www.instagram.com/reel/DKXFSz5...

FFS that is a bad take

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

This is an absolute disaster. If we don't stop this, they will turn NSF into a pawn of the Trump administration. There will be no research on climate, biodiversity, or anything that isn't eugenics or AI or how to more efficiently destroy the planet for profit.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

USGS Bee Lab at the Eastern Ecological Science Center The USGS Bee Lab supports research on native bees. As part of that program we and our co-located USFWS partners develop identification tools and keys for native bee species, take public access hi reso...

The legendary USGS Bee Lab is being shut down. The 2026 budget proposal defunds the Ecosystem Mission Area, which supported the lab. If their science helped your work, there’s still time to make your voice heard. Read below. (1/4)
🧪 #pollinators #Pollinators #USGS #Entomology #Hymenoptera 🪲🪳

The World's Oldest Known Freshwater Turtle Turns 95 | U-M LSA University of Michigan Herbarium A female Blanding’s turtle, it sets a new record with each year of life. And this turtle doesn’t appear to be slowing down. In fact, she is still producing eggs, and shows no signs of declining with a...

I continue to be awed by the Blanding's turtles at the ES George reserve #ESGR. A U-M grad student first tagged them in 1953. At 95 years old, our oldest marked female shows no sign of aging and reproduces with as much vigor as a 20 yr old! lsa.umich.edu/herbarium/ne...

EEB Museums Newsletters | U-M LSA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB)

Spring newsletter from the U-M Museum of Zoology #UMMZ and Herbarium #MICH (EEB museums) with a story from the ES George Reserve #ESGR on our elderly Blanding's turtles
lsa.umich.edu/eeb/alumni-f...

Rampant Reticulation in a Rapid Radiation of Tropical Trees -Insights from Inga (Fabaceae) Abstract. Evolutionary radiations underlie much of the species diversity of life on Earth, particularly within the world’s most species-rich tree flora – t

🌳⚠️Out now in Systematic Biology⚠️🌳
We find rampant reticulation in Inga, the blindingly rapid Amazonian tree radiation! ⚡

BONUS: We also find introgression and selection on genes underlying chemical defences, helping Ingas resist relentless insect herbivory 🐛☠️🌳

academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Me too, see you there!

Fully on board with dems running for office promising to reinstate fired federal employees and jail this administration’s various criminals, but let’s go ahead and add “we will seize by eminent domain any national parkland sold to developers”

Congrats! Coauthors Thiago and Nate are in my department here in Michigan

Wet Season Environments Drive Local Adaptation in the Timber Tree Dicorynia guianensis in French Guiana The vast tropical rainforests of the Guiana Shield in Northern South America play a vital role in maintaining the region's ecological balance and economy. Increasing pressure from selective logging, ...

The tropical timber tree angelique, Dicorynia guianensis, is locally adapted to the east-west rainfall gradient in French Guiana! Congrats to Julien Bonnier for publishing this PhD chapter in Molecular Ecology! doi.org/10.1111/mec....

A male Red-winged Blackbird perched on dry reeds and calling. His posture is hunched and his feathers are fluffed up. This is a black bird with a thin, black bill and dark eyes. He has a large patch of bright red feathers on his shoulder, bordered by bright yellow.

To do:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Scream at marsh
4. Repeat

Measles is our most infectious disease, can pass to others even 2 hours after a victim passes through a room, and kills 1 to 3 people per 1000--mostly young, unvaccinated children. Please get your children vaccinated.

GOING ABOUT DAILY LIFE: The buddy system and knowing your rights 1. In every moment you can, be with a buddy. If you do not have a roommate, consider staying with someone. During the day, walk with a buddy when leaving your room. 2. Consider emailing professors to request remote/hybrid or other accommodations. They are allowed to do so under Academic Senate rules. 3. If ICE comes to your door, do not open the door. You do not have to open your door, and you do not have to speak with them. Do not say anything. If you are alone, call someone to help you stay calm and stay silent. If they force their way in, do not resist, instead say "I do not consent to your entry." 4. You have the right to ask to see a judicially signed warrant. Unless ICE/DHS has a judicially signed warrant to search or arrest, one can refuse ICE entry. This judicial warrant must be signed by a judge; it is different from an administrative warrant which ICE often presents/has when making immigration-related arrests. 5. If you are detained, don't say anything to ICE. Don't sign anything.

In light of the recent visa withdrawals, here is a PDF with advice for international students at UCLA. I’m so sorry to have to share this. drive.google.com/file/d/1x8_z...

Congratulations!

Check out our new paper led by the amazing @benkuhnhaeuser.bsky.social in @science.org, exploring how the extraordinary diversity of Asian rattan palms was assembled 🌴

INPA procura candidato(a) para pós-doutorado no Projeto “Integrando a hidrologia do solo e características hidráulicas para entender os riscos de mortalidade às secas das árvores gigantes” com o projeto “GIGANTE” (www.caryinstitute.org/science/rese...).
@treeco-db.bsky.social @evangora.bsky.social

Week 10 Figuring out what to focus on now & what next in science and higher ed

The latest issue of @lizneeley.bsky.social’s essential weekly newsletter on the continuing attacks on science & higher-ed, and living through these times: buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Congratulations! Much deserved

YouTube video by Evan Gora How some trees benefit from being struck by lightning

⚡⚡Did you know that some trees WANT to be struck by lightning?⚡⚡ Well, trees don't "want" anything, but if they did, then Dipteryx oleifera trees would want to be struck by lightning. Just published yesterday (tinyurl.com/ltbnft) and described in this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwX_... (1/5)

Tufts University student taken into immigration custody by federal agents in Massachusetts Tufts University international graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was taken into custody by federal authorities Tuesday.

Does this sound like your America? Men dressed in unlabeled black hoodies grab a Tufts University student off the street and into a Louisiana jail for writing an opinion piece opposing Israel's war in Gaza. www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/...

📢 Job Alert! 🌳
Looking for a 2-yr postdoc (ext. up to 3 yrs) to join me at U. of Gothenburg to study links between environmental drivers, tree conditions (e.g., #treedamage), and physiological processes leading to #tropical #treemortality.

Apply by: April 17th

Details below