Bryan MacNeill

Florence and the machine 🥹

Transgenerational plasticity affects fitness and mediates local adaptation Transgenerational plasticity (TGP) could be as decisive of a factor in phenotypic outcomes as allelic variation and within-generation plasticity. While TGP is often associated with priming offspring t...

New #mimulus preprint! We found grandparental environments exhibit strong effects on the fitness of their grand-offspring and whether this was positive or negative depended on the historical environment, showing TGP is locally adaptive

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Giant cactus plants ‘loosen up’ to bend with the desert wind Scientists discovered how to study cactus movement without harm - by measuring the silent sway of these desert giants using vibration sensors.

Giant #cactus plants ‘loosen up’ to bend with the #desert wind [feat. #AJB research by @utahgeohaz.bsky.social]

www.earth.com/news/giant-c...

Male Anna’s Hummingbird feeds on creosote

Freezing a hummingbird’s wings at 1/4000 of a second. (Anna’s hummingbird feeding on Creosote blossom)

Check out the latest news and incredible images from our members, Alexander N Schmidt-Lebuhn (CSIRO, Australian National Herbarium).

Cover image of the woolly devil, a newly described species in the sunflower family.

📣 The latest issue of the journal published by The International Compositae Alliance (TICA) is out! Check it out at: www.compositae.org/capitulum_04...

On growth and flow: hydraulic aspects of aboveground meristems Water is essential for plant growth under both normal and stress conditions. Aboveground, two key meristems control plant development: the shoot apical meristem and the vascular cambium. Here, stem c...

Very excited to share my first solo Tansley Insight. An integrated view on the hydraulics of aboveground plant meristems, and the framework of my future work as part of this community #PlantScience

@newphyt.bsky.social

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Temperature‐dependent pollinator‐mediated selection on floral thermoregulation The thermal environment is one of the most pervasive agents of selection. Most plants cannot choose their microclimate, so understanding how they cope with thermal variability is of critical concern...

phenotypic selection on flower thermoregulation depends on air temperature. huuuuge effort by many lab members past and present.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Plants are a big part of your favorite sci-fi and fantasy franchises. Plant biologist Molly Edwards aka @science-irl.bsky.social was on the See Jurassic Right Back To School series chatting her own plant-obsessed origins, and so much more: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Perhaps the best paper title of the year has been dropped 🧪🎤

A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development Plant development depends on coordinated growth at cellular and organ scales, yet comparative analyses are hindered by inconsistent reporting of growth across studies. We conducted a meta-analysis o.....

How fast do plants actually grow? And which growth processes matter most for organ size?
We dived into 176 papers, extracted and re-analyzed the data so you don’t have to!
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@newphyt.bsky.social @virajalim.bsky.social @elvisbranchini.bsky.social

So excited to have been a part of this work!!!

Sign up for @laymonstera.bsky.social's free ASPT @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social webinar, "Phylogenomics and macroevolution of a florally diverse Neotropical plant clade," featuring phylogenomics, biogeography, niche & pollinator evolution!

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

@tropicalbotany.bsky.social

Excited to share I have defended my PhD dissertation.

Thanks a bunch to colleagues and friends that helped and collaborated along this journey!

This is my kinda college hotel. My room has a coffee table book of all the plants on campus, organized phylogenetically! At Huazhong Agricultural University.

It was a real pleasure to speak with Sofie as part of the @disabledscientists.com podcast series!

4-5th Grade Lesson: Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans This three-part series of 50-minute lessons on 'Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans' aligns with Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills Standards for 4-5th Grade Science. It covers: (1) Coral Reefs & their ...

Work with 4-5th graders? Check out our 'Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans' 3-part lesson series on OER Commons! 🪸👩‍🏫

Students build a coral reef food web, then explore how human impacts influence it through hands-on group activities!

oercommons.org/courseware/l...

#TEKS #NGSS #K-12 #teachersky

SARAFINA - Philip Fracassi - SIGNED — CLASH BOOKS From Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award-nominated author, Philip Fracassi, comes a historical horror novel where three brothers go AWOL during one of the most violent battles of the Civil War, but ...

You can now preorder signed copies from CLASH:

www.clashbooks.com/new-products...

Excited to share this work, out today in MBE! In polar fishes, we found that antifreeze protein genes expanded in copy number at low temperatures and contracted in the deep sea, highlighting a role of depth and pressure in AFP evolution.

🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

I’m horrified

A treat to hear from (and briefly chat with) @plantteaching.bsky.social today at the #NBIAST2025 event today

Gawking at hawking
Hummingbird hawk moth
Canon R5 and Sigma 150mm
SS1/2500 F8 ISO3200

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

Scientists uncover a mysterious Jurassic lizard with snake-like jaws A strange Jurassic lizard discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Skye is shaking up what we know about snake evolution. Named Breugnathair elgolensis, the “false snake of Elgol” combined hook-like, python-s...

A new Jurassic fossil from Scotland, Breugnathair elgolensis, shows a combination of snake-like jaws and teeth with a lizard-like body and limbs, providing direct evidence of diverse squamate traits early in their history.
#Paleontology #Evolution #Fossils
🧪🐍🦴⚒️
Paper
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Okay I really actually need to spend my weekend writing.

IT IS SO GOOD!

Flower display and temperature in Royal irises (Iris section Oncocyclus, Iridaceae) Abstract. Large flowers are typically more conspicuous to pollinators and are associated with more nutritional rewards than small flowers. Flower size can

📢Paper alert!🐝🪻 We studied flower advertising and temperature on Royal irises. Flowers heat 10-35 min faster than ambient, likely offering the pollinators a head start in the morning. @telavivuni.bsky.social @yuvalsapir.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/jpe/article/...

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