iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Caroline Bartman @cbartman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Are there key discoveries made with spatial RNA seq? Or what are your favorite spatial rna seq papers? Pls reski!

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MSU Plant Resilience Institute @msupri.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

On windswept coasts in Oregon & California, an unassuming flower manages to withstand salty blasts that kill its inland counterparts. Known as the yellow monkeyflower, researchers in @davidlowry.bsky.social's lab are unlocking the secrets to its survival. #PlantScience 🔗 eeb.msu.edu/news/monkeyf...

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Thanks to the @msupri.bsky.social for supporting first author Sylvie and me with a seed grant to do this wacky project! We pitched E. angulosa as the Next Big Extrafloral Nectary Model, and instead, serendipity ensued.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

New preprint! Concerning Erythranthe angulosa, a charming little monkeyflower from the Eastern Sierra that makes up for its lack of extrafloral nectaries with striking morphological variation.

A small herbaceous plant (Erythranthe angulosa) with developing fruits and small swellings at the base of some leaves, growing appressed to a granite rock.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

New preprint! Concerning Erythranthe angulosa, a charming little monkeyflower from the Eastern Sierra that makes up for its lack of extrafloral nectaries with striking morphological variation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Taken together, we've now shown three different, sequentially acting mechanisms for resilience under salt spray. Yellow monkeyflower is the first species where all three have been tested. We hope for many more! @msupri.bsky.social

Three panels representing three different salt spray resilience strategies in an salt-spray-susceptible inland plant and a salt-spray-adapted coastal plant. For salt spray escape, a tall inland plant contacting many salt spray droplets (represented by orange dots) is next to a short coastal plant that contacts few droplets. For salt spray exclusion, plant epidermal cells with a cuticle over them are shown, with many salt spray droplets entering the inland cuticle and few entering the coastal. For tissue tolerance, a plasmolyzed inland cell is shown with salt in the cytoplasm while a healthy coastal cell is shown with salt in the vacuole, illustrating the possible role of compartmentalizing salt in preventing cell damage.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Compared to their inland counterparts, coastal monkeyflowers take up less salt through the leaf surface. Leaf disks from coastals also take longer to die on salt media, suggesting that tissue tolerance mechanisms (maintaining homeostasis after salt has entered the leaf) are also at work.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

See our new paper examining how monkeyflowers handle salt spray landing on their leaves! Salt spray lands on plant leaves in coastal habitats around the world, yet we know little about how plants survive this stress.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Pleased to share a new preprint with Ousseini Issaka Salia, Sam Pérez, Esther Woolcock, and @jeffreykconner.bsky.social! We used replicated mapping populations to investigate the genetic architecture of short stamen number variation in Arabidopsis thaliana. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Shared QTLs underlie loss of a conserved trait in replicate mapping populations of Arabidopsis thaliana

The evolutionary mechanisms leading to nonfunctional trait loss are not well understood. Some Arabidopsis thaliana populations display incomplete loss of short stamens, floral organs that do not contr...

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

We found that loci affecting short stamen number overlap with flowering time loci, indicating linked or pleiotropic loci affecting both traits. But this was only true in one of our two mapping populations!

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Since short stamens have little effect on fitness, we asked whether pleiotropy with other traits might drive short stamen number evolution. In natural accessions, short stamen number is correlated with traits like flowering time, which might matter more for fitness. academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

academic.oup.com

Incomplete loss of a conserved trait: function, latitudinal cline, and genetic constraints

Abstract. Retention of nonfunctional traits over evolutionary time is puzzling, because the cost of trait production should drive loss. Indeed, several stu

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

But in self-fertilizing species like A. thaliana, pollinator visits are rare, and the short stamens don't reach the stigma. Some populations of A. thaliana often make flowers with 0-1 short stamens instead of the usual 2 (cool pics and a drift/selection test here): academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

academic.oup.com

Evaluating the roles of drift and selection in trait loss along an elevational gradient

The evolutionary mechanisms underlying loss or retention of traits that have lost function are poorly understood. Short stamens in Arabidopsis thaliana pro

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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Literally targeting people like me.

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I find it literally insane that people don’t respond to the experience living in this smoke by demanding a transition away from fossil fuels.

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David Lowry @davidlowry.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I am thrilled to see this paper finally out. The study faced many challenges, including a field season upended by the global pandemic and then saved by heroic efforts. The results were also complex and unexpected. Great work by Kathy Toll to see this through. academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

academic.oup.com

Plant hormone manipulation impacts salt spray tolerance, which preempts herbivory as a driver of local adaptation in the yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus

Abstract. A major challenge in evolutionary biology is identifying the selective agents and phenotypes underlying local adaptation. Local adaptation along

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Dr. Hilary Rose Dawson @hilaryrosed.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Can we please quit with the oversized 'try AI!' popups on scientific papers that take up readable space? This popup on @newphyt.bsky.social doesn't even have a way to shrink it so I have to give up the bottom couple of inches on my screen.

Screenshot of a New Phytologist article that has a large 'Try AI Companion' bubble that persistently floats on top of the text in a not-subtle way.

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 11/07/2026

🚨 HEADS UP: If you haven't submitted a comment on the OMB proposal yet, there's still time - but it's running out! There are only 2 days left to push back against Russell Vought's attempt to give political appointees unprecedented control over federal research funding. Take Action: zurl.co/qTjQP

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

How do plants locally adapt to challenging habitats despite ongoing gene flow? Come find me tomorrow at poster 236W to chat about life history divergence on small spatial scales in the yellow monkeyflower! #PEQG26

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Reposted by Madison Plunkert (she/her)

Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Write to your representatives. Talk to your scientific society about what it can do. There is a partisan effort to discredit, restrict, and dismantle the US scientific enterprise. We can't just shut up and take it.

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Gina Baucom @gbaucom.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Head's up SSE members: Virtual Evolution is next week! Join us for the SSE Presidential Symposium on May 21 for talks from SSE leaders and past presidents on sustaining research, supporting trainees, navigating funding uncertainty, and strengthening evolutionary biology. Pls RT!

SSE Presidential Symposium – Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology
May 21, 9:15 AM - 12:30 PM
This year’s SSE Presidential Symposium will consist of two linked sessions designed to address the current climate of uncertainty surrounding federal funding and its implications for evolutionary biology. Together, these sessions are designed to move from personal grounding to community-level strategy, offering both immediate support and longer-term vision.

Part 1: Recommendations for the Community
Lightning Talks from Past SSE Presidents and Leaders in the Field
May 21, 9:15 AM - 10:30 AM EDT

This session will feature past SSE Presidents and leaders in the field, each giving a 5-minute lightning talk offering concrete, actionable ideas for maintaining research programs, supporting trainees, and strengthening the field during periods of funding constraint. The emphasis will be on practical recommendations at multiple scales—individual researchers, departments, universities, the society, and the field as a whole. There will be a 30-minute Q&A following the talks.

Prothama Manna
Postdoctoral Fellow at Clemson University, SSE GSAC Chair
“What Trainees Need in Uncertain Times: Paths to Resilient Science”

Mohamed Noor
Executive Vice Provost and Professor of Biology at Duke University, 2014 SSE President and former Evolution Editor-in-Chief
“How to ask for help in uncertain times”

Ruth Shaw
Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, 2020 SSE President and former Evolution Editor-in-Chief
“Realigning scholarly evaluation to support scientists' agency”

Joseph Graves
MacKenzie Scott Endowed Professor of Biology at NC Agricultural and Technical State University
“What Departments Can/Must Do to Support Junior Faculty in an Anti-Science Climate”

Scott Edwards
Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard Universit…

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Thank you so much to David, @botsocamerica.bsky.social , and the Kaplan family! I am so excited to spend the next year figuring out how monkeyflowers make their rhizomes.

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Go Belowground! @exfumo.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

#GoBelowground is going international again! 🇧🇷 This time we go to Brazil. #Functional #morphology #course Go Belowground! will bring students together to explore #storage organs, #clonal plants, and the hidden half of #plant life. #ExFuMo #ecology @czechacademy.bsky.social @ibotcz.bsky.social

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Eliminating DEI programs would mean failing to broaden participation for minorities in STEM, which is a congressionally required goal of NSF Broader Impacts and also just the right thing to do.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Little micro-action (that falls short of what's needed here) is click the NSF feedback form and indicate that this page was *not* helpful.

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

My speech last week for the #StandUpForScience National Day of Action rally at the Michigan State Capitol. When we protect science, we protect democracy too. #Lansing @standupforscience.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSMZ...

youtube.com

Stand Up For Science - Lansing, MI - Part 1 of 3

YouTube video by Madison Plunkert

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Reposted by Madison Plunkert (she/her)

Pauline Raimondeau @paulineraim.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Introgression fuelling reproductive isolation? 👀 Impressive work & fascinating story ✨

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Reposted by Madison Plunkert (she/her)

Sandra @lilysch.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

#StandUpForScience Lansing, Michigan

Colorful protest sign that reads
Science Saves Lives

Protest sign reading Defunding Science is Doge-Shit

Protest sign reading
Stand Up For Science:
Earth is not flat
Vaccines work
We‘ve been to the moon
Chemtrails aren’t a thing
Climate Change is real

Protest sign reading
Science is a Mus-t (letter k crossed out and replaced with that last t)

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Reviewing these speakers' prepared remarks is the highlight of rally prep! Michigan, don't miss this event!

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Indivisible Central Michigan @indivcentralmi.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Are you standing up for Science on Saturday? Our nearest rally is at Michigan State Capitol!

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Science is part of a healthy democracy. Join us at the Capitol in Lansing to Stand Up for Science! March 7 from 1-3pm. @standupforscience.bsky.social

Statue of liberty in red overlaying black/navy text. Text reads: Stand Up for Science National Day of Action. Take back our science, health, and democracy! March 7th, 2026. Lansing, MI. Michigan State Capitol, East Lawn. 1:00pm-3:00pm. Visit website to register, volunteer, and donate! standupforscience.net/march7

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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

$128 million can pay for more than a hundred NSF proposals. A handful of NSF awards over a 15-year period can establish and launch multiple careers for the PI and trainees alike. We could have supported entire cohorts of young scientists, but we get concentration camps instead. #AbolishICE

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Science is part of a healthy democracy. Join us at the Capitol in Lansing to Stand Up for Science! March 7 from 1-3pm. @standupforscience.bsky.social

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Seema Sheth @seemasheth.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

We are recruiting field technicians to contribute to a field study of adaptation to climate in Chamaecrista fasciculata in Raleigh/Chapel Hill, NC. My collaborators at UGA will soon post similar positions in Ithaca, NY and Archbold Biological Station, FL. Please share jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/225...

jobs.ncsu.edu

Temporary Plant Evolutionary Ecology Field Technician

The Sheth plant evolutionary ecology lab in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC) is currently seeking field technician to participate in an NS...

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David Lowry @davidlowry.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

I am currently searching for a new postdoctoral researcher to study the evolution, genetics, and physiology of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in switchgrass at Michigan State University. This work will be funded by a newly funded five-year DOE grant. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

careers.msu.edu

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States

Position Summary The Lowry Lab at Michigan State University is searching for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct molecular and physiological experiments to understand the causes of genetic va...

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David Lowry @davidlowry.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

New preprint from former Lowry Lab postdoc, Kathy Toll, providing evidence that delayed flowering time by coastal perennial Mimulus guttatus may be advantageous through avoidance of high wind speeds and salt spray. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Figure 1. (a) Map of collection localities of coastal perennial (dark blue circles), inland annual
(red squares), inland perennial (yellow diamond), near-coastal annual (orange triangle), and
near-coastal perennial (light blue triangles) populations used in the experiment, (b) photograph of
experiment at Bodega Marine Reserve (photo credit: K Toll), (c) plot of average daily wind speed
at the Bodega Marine Reserve in 2023, and (d) plot of sodium accumulation on filter paper traps
during the spring and summer exposure periods in exclosures (brown) and controls (green). Wind
speeds were higher in the spring cohort compared to the summer cohort (c, pink vs green), and
exclosures significantly reduced Na accumulation in both seasons (d, green vs brown).

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

I've never used Sigma, but if you access IDT through the Oligo Ordering link on the MSU BMB store website, then shipping is $1.50. bmb.natsci.msu.edu/biochemistry...

bmb.natsci.msu.edu

Oligo Ordering - Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

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Madison Plunkert (she/her) @madisonplunkert.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

We hope others will test these (and other?) mechanisms in diverse plant systems, so that we can figure out how plants handle these stressful coastal habitats.

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