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Mark Hughes

@markhughesis.bsky.social
421 followers 351 following 9 posts

Taxonomy Research Leader (Southeast Asia) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh www.rbge.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are…

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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Michael Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
How much of the tree of life did you eat? Phylodiet scores a meal by phylogenetic diversity: type what you ate and it builds the dated tree of the organisms in it, from ~3,300 edible eukaryotes, back 2 billion years. Last night's dinner, below. 🧵 mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/app/phylodiet.html
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
iaptglobal @iaptglobal.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Check out the August/2026 issue of TAXON [75(4)]! 🪸🍄🌿 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19968175...
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Casey Dunn @caseywdunn.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
My new book, Phylogenetic Biology, is now published. Available online for free at dunnlab.org/phylogenetic... . Physical copies can be purchased at shop.lightningsource.com/b/085?params... or your favorite bookstore.
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GBIF @gbif.org · 17/08/2026
📣 Register for our next Data Use Club covering the new and improved GBIF.org! This session provides a practical demonstration of some of the updates and new features of the recently refreshed GBIF.org website. 📍 25 August 09:00 CEST 👉 Register: 🔗gbif.link/DUC_new-GBIF
a cream coloured graphic with a drawing of a coral and pink text reading GBIF data use club practical session new and improved GBIF.org
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Nature @nature.com · 14/08/2026
Nature research paper: Species intraspecific variation drives tropical forest drought resistance go.nature.com/4i5VxKH
go.nature.com
Species intraspecific variation drives tropical forest drought resistance - Nature
Substantial intraspecific variation, together with species turnover, drives coordinated shifts in drought resistance such as increased embolism resistance and wider stomatal safety margins in drier forests.
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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Ok, this is cool... Treemble: A graphical tool to generate Newick strings from phylogenetic tree images🧪 academic.oup.com/bioinformati... Treemble is a native desktop application for macOS and Windows and is freely available, with documentation, at treemble.org.
Treemble views and performance.
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Tim Utteridge @timutteridge.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Gardenwise, the magazine of Singapore Botanic Gardens - a new bumper issue has gone online. Tributes to Dr Chew Wee-Lek (1932–2026) and Ruth Kiew (1946–2025), plus - Digitisation - Ethnobotany in Singapore's desserts - Botanical Art - SBG Archives www.nparks.gov.sg/sbg/research...
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The International Biogeography Society @biogeography.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Dr. Catherine Graham (Swiss Federal Research Institute, WSL) is our Funk Biogeography Seminar speaker this month! Join us for an exploration of the past, present, and future of studying biodiversity in environmental space. Learn more and register at: www.biogeography.org/news/news/ma...
This is a flyer advertising the monthly Funk Biogeography Seminar series hosted by The International Biogeography Society. The society logo is at the top of the flyer in natural colors, followed by various images of Earth's fauna and flora, such as dolphins and sunflowers. The text advertises the seminar content: the title is "Biodiversity Patterns in Environmental Space." The speaker is Dr. Catherine Graham from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, and the seminar will take place on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at 1:00PM UTC. Additional information and registration can be found at www.biogeography.org.
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Annals of Botany @annbot.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
♻️🆓: Phylogeny, biogeography and ecological diversification of New Caledonian palms (Arecaceae) doi.org/10.1093/aob/...
doi.org
Validate User
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
TAXACOM is being reborn. After the mailing list was abruptly discontinued (and its archives apparently deleted) it is being relaunched in Google Groups groups.google.com/g/taxacom Let us rejoice knowing there is once again a place to endlessly argue about “what is a species?” I’ve missed it.
groups.google.com
Taxacom - Google Groups
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Jo Wilbraham @jowilbraham.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Another street tree epiphyte that's becoming more common in London - Orthotrichum tenellum forms small neat cushions with notably long capsules and calyptra. The leaf tips also have a distinctive beak at the end. Another bryophyte taking advantage of the cleaner air!
Neat little cushion of Orthotrichum tenellumTwo cushions of Orthotrichum tenellum on street treeLeaf of Orthotrichum tenellum under the microscope
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Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
🎉 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 🌍 📚 🧪
An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.
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CETAF - Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities @eurotaxonomy.cetaf.org · 27/02/2026
📣The CETAF Scientific Research Working Group is organising an upcoming live webinar: "What Defines a Species in the Molecular Age? Delimitation and Diagnosis with DNA Barcodes" 📅 13 May | 14:00–16:00 CET 👉Registration is now open: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #Taxonomy #Systematics
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Errin Haines @errinhaines.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
NEW reporting from @19thnews.org on the Epstein files shows how academic research funding intersected with women scientists and institutional power shaped by male influence. An important story about accountability, impact and who gets protected -- and who doesn't. 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
19thnews.org
The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Slowly adding content to bionames.org and tweaking the interface. Hope page loads faster now and looks a little better on mobile. Lots of DOIs and PDFs for taxonomic papers, but so much to do. Half a million names linked to DOIs, wish it were more.
For background on the project see "BioNames: linking taxonomy, texts, and trees" (https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj. 190 L) and "Ten years and a million links: building a global taxonomic library connecting persistent identifiers for names, publications and people" (https://doi.org/BDJ.11.e107914 L).
Database Statistics
Distinct name clusters
Names with publications
Names with DOls
Names with free PDFs
Total names
5,464,929

4,496,603

1,782,674

504,962

286,091
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
History of Geology @historyofgeology.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
February 21, 1993, died on this day aged 105 years, Danish seismologist Inge Lehman. She discovered that the Earth has a inner core announcing it in 1936 with the shortest title for a paper ever: P' - after the seismic discontinuity between core and mantle shown by the P-waves
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iaptglobal @iaptglobal.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
TAXON is transitioning to a new publishing system. Manuscripts currently under review in Editorial Manager will remain there until decisions are made on these papers: www.editorialmanager.com/taxon. All new submissions need to be sent via Research Exchange: submission.wiley.com/journal/TAX.
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Biodiversity Meets Data @bmd-project.eu · 27/01/2026
Call for Sessions 💡 Share expertise and insights at #TDWG2026, exploring how collections and standards advance the documentation and understanding of #biodiversity. 🗓 Submission deadline: 26 February 2026 👉 Learn more: www.tdwg.org/conferences/...
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Mark Hughes @markhughesis.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
PhD on Begonia speciation at RBGE/Glasgow! Looking at the genomics of reproductive isolation and how fast it evolves - is it the reason this is one of the largest genera of flowering plants? www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
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Mark Hughes @markhughesis.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Begonia is now up to 2200 accepted species! padme.rbge.org.uk/Begonia/
Homepage of the Begonia Resource Centre, a database for Begonia nomenclature and specimens
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Sandy Hetherington @sandyheth.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Interested in Botanical spirals but couldn’t attend my lecture @linneansociety.bsky.social Don’t worry you can now watch it on YouTube! 👇👇👇 The talk includes an overview of our recent paper on fern fiddleheads @currentbiology.bsky.social youtu.be/WLHDnjwcPlc?...
youtu.be
The Origin and Evolution of Botanical Spirals | Sandy Hetherington
YouTube video by Linnean Society
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Mark Hughes @markhughesis.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
AI 10 day forecasts massively outperform numerical prediction deepmind.google/discover/blo...
deepmind.google
GraphCast: AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting
Our state-of-the-art model delivers 10-day weather predictions at unprecedented accuracy in under one minute
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Michael Sundue @msundue.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
"Despite harboring around one-third of the world’s fern species, less than 6% of Southeast Asian ferns have been DNA-sequenced" -- here's our response! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
The biodiversity data deluge is here - the equivalent of #MooresLaw but for biodiversity data? "we estimated that the total number of plant distribution records doubles every 17 years and the number of spatially unique records doubles every 21 years." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🌎🧪🦋🦫
patial and taxonomic coverage of terrestrial plant occurrence data. Georeferenced plant observations, as illustrated by observation dates in Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; the largest biodiversity informatics infrastructure), have increased exponentially over the past 200 years (panels a, b), though the number of species recorded in these databases is reaching saturation (panel c). By integrating additional data sources compiled by Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN; i.e., non-GBIF sources comprising ~15 million records; panel d), the georeferenced plant observations in GBIF can be expanded by an additional ~4 million spatially unique records (panel e) and ~20,000 species (panel f). Still, the gaps in plant distributions warrant our attention: areas in Russia, central Asia, and northern Africa (red colour in panel g) are missing publicly available occurrences. The grey colour in panel (g) represents the presence of plant data, and the black colour represents ice-covered areas
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Ashish Malik @ashish-malik.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I am offering a PhD opportunity at University of Edinburgh as part of the E5 DTP. CASE partner: Forest Research On the microbial mechanisms of soil carbon cycling in tree-planted upland soils. Application deadline: 6th Jan. Please share with your network. e4-dtp.ed.ac.uk/e5-dtp/super...
Trees in an upland valley in Scotland, UK
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Mark Hughes @markhughesis.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
This beautiful triptych of Sabal mexicana has taken over from the titan arum in the foyer of the botanics recently. Wonderful to see this on the way to ones office 😍 www.rbge.org.uk/news/article... stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/37173
A large triptych of a palm tree, Sabal mexicana, in watercolour
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Reposted by Mark Hughes
Anon Opin @anonopin.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Houseplants as Warhammer 40k units: HQ: begonias Troops: pothos Elite: Philodendron Fast attack: calathea Heavy support: monstera delicosia.
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alanelliott.bsky.social @alanelliott.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
The WFO Consortium welcomes engagement by the international taxonomic community to create and join TENs. Find out more about existing and how to form new TENs. about.worldfloraonline.org/tens
about.worldfloraonline.org
Tens | World Flora OnlineWFO logoWFO LogoOpenWFO logoGSPC LogoCOBD LogoTwitter LogoFacebook Logo
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Mark Hughes @markhughesis.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
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