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Caitlin MacKenzie

@cmacmtns.bsky.social
2.9K followers 687 following 374 posts

Plant ecologist, lover of tiny alpine communities on small mountains, faculty at Bennington College, Plant Love Stories co-founder, she/her

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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 22h
My colleagues and I analyzed public comments on the proposed review of National Monuments during the first Trump admin and noticed the early stages of this trend conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Recurrent neural network reveals overwhelming sentiment against 2017 review of US monuments from humans and bots
In the United States, the conservation of federal lands reflects a social history of public advocacy, public policy, and public comments. US federal agencies solicit public comments to scope for idea...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I just haven't figured out how to tie "the last of the bugs" to emerald ash borer, hemlock woolly adelgid, beech leaf disease, etc...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
First we listen to the song clips and students identify the disturbance agent. Then we break into groups: each group has a theme song and a white paper/news story/paper on a particular example of that disturbance agent in Vermont and its impact on forests. They present out at the end of class
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The album name checks an ice storm, wildfire smog, tornado, hurricane, and summer thunderstorm. I paired this activity with a Tom Wessels reading last spring, this fall we're reading Ecology & Recovery of Eastern Old-Growth Forests. What forest structure & composition does Noah see in the song?
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Very excited to teach ecology & conservation tomorrow. We're doing my favorite activity: Noah Kahan teaches us Vermont forest disturbance dynamics through song lyrics on the great divide album.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In the last couple of years, we've seen multiple critical collections (museums, herbaria) close. The IUCN--the global authority on the status of biodiversity--recently published on how important these kinds of facilities are in conservation. Every day, the dead are working to protect the living.
iucn.org
From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums
The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation: a formal acknowledgement that natural history museums,...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I'm reading the first round of "restoration plans" for artifacts and 1. my students are very talented — the woodworking/fiber arts/bicycle repair skills are very impressive 2. the artifacts are so lovingly selected — even the items that were found on the street are given a full nostalgia treatment
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
one of my students literally ran to grab his banjo when we started this activity
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AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 23/09/2026
Polls open in the only American election that really matters: Fat Bear Week u.afp.com/S9o4
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
My forest ecology students are getting into structure-biodiversity relationships today so at the end of class we'll be listening to Pete Seeger and writing new green grass grows all around verses about bark microsites & epiphytes and coarse woody debris & winter wrens
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Kate Marvel @drkatemarvel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
My hot take on AI and climate change is that I would not like to be killed by either of them
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Researchers across the country are turning to side hustles to fund their work. Behind the cuts sits a bigger shift: whether American science can still sustain durable research capacity. @lindseydcameron.bsky.social and I examine the stakes in a new piece @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
The wrong platform for science
Daniel Blumstein recently sat in a Colorado meadow waiting for yellow-bellied marmots to appear, as the ecologist and evolutionary biologist had done many times before, the New York Times reported. Bu...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Thinking Cup for sandwiches and coffee, Harvard Bookstore (not the COOP), flour for baked goods and coffee, Life Alive for smoothies, 1369 for coffee, Vinal for breakfast sandwiches (and coffee)
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Laura Lagomarsino, PhD @tropicalbotany.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Look, y'all— this is not the worst outcome, but it's also not great. Framing this as gaining a notably large herbarium is spin; the reality is a historic, important herbarium has lost its identity. The specimens were never going to be trashed; Duke still voluntarily truncated their botanical legacy.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
made a friend in the alpine
A selfie of a smiling scientist on top of a mountain in New Hampshire. To her left, a raven sits on a rock and looks at the camera.
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jessamine finch @seedystudies.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
📣Atlanta Botanical Garden is hiring a Field Biologist! Come be my colleague🌿 🎓 Bach. req'd, master's pref'd 🥾 2 years of post-degree fieldwork req'd 🏵️ familiarity with SE US flora & nat. communities 🗺️ proficient in ArcGIS #botanyjobs #conservationjobs recruiting.paylocity.com/Recruiting/J...
recruiting.paylocity.com
Atlanta Botanical Garden Inc - Field Biologist
The Field Biologist will be part of the Conservation & Research Department team within the Southeastern Center for Conservation at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. They will work under the direction ...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
preparing to revisit alpine plant survey plots next week and I'm re-reading the datasheets from last year... Can't wait to see this "protected secret gnome garden"
messy handwriting from an ecologist on a datasheet "microhabitat description: protected secret gnome garden among krummholz, mossy slope surrounded by boulder fields LUSH"
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
on the portrait where he's doing Lapland cultural appropriation? and holding the twinflower that he definitely back-dated to re-name after himself?
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Thank you! It's such a nice office and the deep clean makes me so happy!
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
my campus office got fresh paint and waxed & buffed floors this summer and as much as it sucked to move out (i.e. tetris everything in my lab next door) I really enjoyed the first part of moving back in today, setting up, and re-organizing all the books and field guides
a view of a very clean ecology faculty office with freshly painted walls (white), a very clean blackboard, bookshelves full of newly organized books, a freshly vacuumed rug on a freshly waxed and buffed linoleum floor, an immaculate clean desktop and sun streaming through extremely clean windows.
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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I want to hear about what early-mid-career ecologists and botanists have done on sabbaticals, especially "stay-baticals"
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
"No community is stable if the amount of time considered is great enough" We love a Margaret Davis postdoc! What a great paleoecology/Fight Club line for a paper discussion on "stability" in old growth forests!
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Found the best Kerry Woods figures in this paper from 1984. I love these illustrations so much. The original tree emojis.
A figure from a forest ecology paper published in 1984 that features stick-figure-style illustrations of a hemlock tree and adorable sketches of helmock needles, maple leaves, and beech leaves to represent the distribution of sapling species under a hemlock canopy in different old growth sites. The figure shows that hemlock saplings are almost always more prevalent under hemlock canopy than the maple and beech saplings.
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Casey terHorst @ecoevolab.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
EEB Mentor Match is now open! But apps due soon (8/17). Mentees: get help applying for grad school or fellowships in ecology & evolution. Mentors: senior grads, post-docs, or faculty in these fields willing to give advice Org by Diversity Cmte of @asn-amnat.bsky.social Pls share! eebmentormatch.com
eebmentormatch.com
EEB Mentor Match
Visit the post for more.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
All this to say, the things that are hidden or background in our peer-reviewed literature are shaped by our culture and biases and sometimes that means we elide the contributions of community science and natural history and sometimes we publish homophobic takes on birds
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
overt censorship (papers submitted on same sex pairs got rejected). BUT, there was also an interesting collection of published papers that did record same sex pairs — they made it into the record because they were presented as aberrant...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Essentially, Lulu Miller explains that examples of queerness in nature were missing from the scientific record due to bias (in monomorphic species, pairs were just assumed to be male-female); self-censorship (researchers observed same sex pairs, but did not publish these observations); and...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
...They argue that we, as ecologists, should be better at writing about the bits that don't quite neatly fit into the IMRAD template for peer-review that we are well-trained to produce. There's a great @yourewrongabout.bsky.social episode on gay seagulls that I promise is relevant here...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Okay I lied, I have a third note: 3. Sridhar and Cooper both explore and try to daylight data streams and sources that are often left out of (or hidden from) the scientific literature and both papers call for more explicit recognition of natural history/community science in articles...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
1. I was surprised (but maybe not shocked) to see no mention of herbaria! Are herbaria the extra-extra hidden, super-background research substrate? 2. This paper pairs well with Cooper's 2014 "The Invisible Prevalence of Citizen Science in Global Research"
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Just read and really enjoyed "Spark, Scaffold, Substrate" (the @asn-amnat.bsky.social paper on natural history in EEB research recommended by @hormiga.bsky.social) and I have two notes...
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 26/07/2026
When I advise my faculty colleagues to diversify their funding beyond their traditional NSF/NIH grant portfolio, this isn't quite what I had in mind, but maybe where we're headed www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/s...
nytimes.com
‘OnlyMarms’: Marmots Are on OnlyFans to Raise Money for Research
A team of scientists uploaded videos of the squirrel-like rodents in the wild on the adult-content site OnlyFans to raise money amid government budget cuts.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
The art museum in my home town has a fantastic exhibition on climate change this summer. I totally stumbled into this multimedia space while taking my kid and my niece to see the armor down the hall and we were mesmerized. www.worcesterart.org/exhibitions/...
worcesterart.org
Fever Dreams of a Cool-Breathed Earth | Worcester Art Museum
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The class is called "Out of the Woods" 🤣
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
I was once presenting a talk for a regional botanical society and they put up a slide with my photo to introduce me... and then I walked to the podium wearing the exact same outfit.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
if you have a favorite Kerry Woods or non-Kerry-Woods paper about old growth forests (esp. eastern old growth) how to define them? why they are or are not meaningful in conservation? quirks and universalities of structure, function, ecosystem services and/or disturbance dynamics? please share!
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
I guess I've been at Bennington long enough that I'm no longer the "new Kerry Woods" but I am totally taking advantage of Kerry's emeritus status this fall and teaching a senior reading seminar on old growth forests... we're reading Kerry from the 1970s through 2020s
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Have so much fun! Wish I could be there, but looking forward to #Botany2027 in the northeast!
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Can we take a moment to appreciate the many services @doctorzen.net has provided for our community? Starting with the Better Posters blog, and now this lovely curated AI slop collection. A true champion for the people.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
This fall my intro to forest ecology methods course will include an ecological restoration project in the campus forest and I'm so into these examples of teaching restoration principles with bicycles (Speldwinde 2010) and artifacts (Lundholm and Larson 2004). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
This is a great conversation! I was so psyched that I was able to watch it live last week in the midst of some fieldwork, but we wrapped up Mt Mansfield early in the day and I practically skipped across the ridge to get home in time for a shower & #Botany360.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Just treated the field vehicle to a carwash after wrapping our week in the Green Mountains (lots of dirt roads) and the morale-boosting among the undergrad field assistants was off the charts. College students love a carwash.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
I think I've seen this film before... During the first Trump admin, my colleagues and I analyzed the public comments about de-listing National Monuments. Though back then, 95% of humans, form letters AND bots all supported protecting Nat'l Monuments conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Recurrent neural network reveals overwhelming sentiment against 2017 review of US monuments from humans and bots
In the United States, the conservation of federal lands reflects a social history of public advocacy, public policy, and public comments. US federal agencies solicit public comments to scope for idea...
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Submitted my comment this morning before packing up equipment with undergraduates from my small, rural college to spend the day on Vermont's tallest peak downloading microclimate data from sensors that we installed last summer as part of an NSF-funded project.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
For folks asking why bother commenting because the OMB won't care: comments help build cases for the courts by explicitly laying out harms. That's why it's really important to have your comments be as specific as possible. Also, contact your senators and reps! They actually do care about this.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
I'm reading through the Tables of Contents on back issues of @newphyt.bsky.social for a lit review project and the cover photos for this journal are phenomenal. Gorgeous plants. Just beautiful.
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
I proposed swag: designing a tshirt or hat to give students in the fall (I have insider knowledge that there will be a Community Dye day with botanical materials from our campus farm, so a white tshirt could be a great BYO dye project)
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Our Environmental Studies program threw a cook-out for Senior Night and the faculty grilling for the students was super fun and a bit cheaper than expected. How should we spend down the rest of our program budget?
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Caitlin MacKenzie @cmacmtns.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Yay! Can't wait to see what you do!
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