Jalene LaMontagne

Freshly baked bagels.

Uncooked cinnamon rolls in a tray.

I invited some folks over to watch the CAN-USA gold 🏅 hockey game with me early in the morning, so I've been prepping breakfast tonight. Cinnamon rolls will go in the oven in the a.m. Go Team 🇨🇦!

Person in front of a screen.

Group of people

Two people

Trailblazer Addy Yoder description.

A huge congratulations to PhD student @addy-yoder.bsky.social for being recognized as a 2026 University of Missouri-St. Louis Trailblazer! #UMSL #UMSLBiology

“At NSF, the net reduction of 205 STEM Ph.D.s between 1 January and 30 November constituted 40% of its total pre-Trump Ph.D. workforce of 517, by far the largest percentage at any agency. STEM Ph.D.s also make up a larger percentage of the total workforce at NSF than at any other agency…”.

Hey @mhmurray.bsky.social, I'm listening to an interview with you about your rat research on CBC right now! Awesome!

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Two people talking at a poster.

Attended the #WildThings conference today, where PhD student @addy-yoder.bsky.social presented a poster on her Red-headed woodpecker/ Mast seeding research. #UMSLBiology

Missouri Botanical Garden in the snow.

Missouri Botanical Garden in the snow.

Missouri Botanical Garden in the snow.

Missouri Botanical Garden in the snow.

Appreciating the beauty and calm of snow and sunshine on my walk to the office this morning. @mobotgarden.bsky.social

NSF building on Eisenhower Av. HUD now owns.

Destroying the NSF mural in the foyer. Of the Eisenhower building.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone.

The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets.

We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

🍁Funding for new PhD students ($40k/yr) & postdocs ($70k/yr) coming from outside Canada. Contact me if interested in #Ecophysiology at #UBC in #Vancouver! Possible topics: leaf physiology, thermal ecology, microclimate, scaling, tree physiology, forest ecology, more! michaletzlab.org
Please share!

Last spring, I was asked to give carreer advice to grad students. And the one thing I told them was: our best skill is our ability to learn difficult things -- it's also the first skill you will lose unless you intentionally don't let yourselves go.

You're so talented, Pen!

360 watercolour flowers painted stamp size across 18 pages of paper, laid out across a large dining table

The final five panels of watercolour flowers in bloom in late December in Yorkshire

The first flower: a snowdrop painted on 22 December 2024

The last flower, Viburnum against a blue sky, painted on 21 December 2025

And that’s a wrap on a year of watercolour #WildflowerHour: 365 flowers painted within a week of blooming. Mostly wildflowers, with a few garden escapes, and a whole lot of joy.

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Your annual reminder that:

- when submissions peak, editors may become more selective in what they send out for peer review,

and

- submissions peak right before Christmas

Make of that what you will.

Heading home after a fab week in Edinburgh Scotland to receive the 2025 British Ecological Society Equality & Diversity Champion Award. It’s been an emotional & overwhelming week & I’m grateful to my European colleagues for their support & solidarity. What a wonderful way to end the year! #BES2025

I’m beyond excited to be jumping the pond for the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting in just a couple days. So honored to receive this recognition and celebrate with colleagues and friends at one of my favorite meetings! First time back since pre-COVID! If you see me there say hi!
#BES2025

Apply to be a BES Associate Editor - British Ecological Society Help advance outstanding ecological research by joining our Editorial Boards! Applications are now open across all seven BES journals.

📣 Ecologists and evolutionary biologists! Have you ever wanted to be a journal editor? BES journals are having an open call for editors. Details: www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/appl... Happy to answer any Qs! Open to all nationalities. Applications from postdocs welcome :)

Parents share emotional look inside empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings Parents of children killed in school shootings often don't know what to do with the bedrooms left behind. Several shared an emotional look at the reminders of what they've lost.

Devastating.

Parents share emotional look inside empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings.

www.cbsnews.com/news/left-be...

Applications due by Dec. 1st.

Orange and white cat siting on a box that is on its side, and a white and grey cat is in the box.

Celebrating #Caturday with a new box in the house. Both cats had to try it, at the same time, of course.

Person on skis with a dog. Conifer trees in the background.

I'm happy to welcome Dr. Shelby Tisinai to the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow! She started on Monday this week. Shelby completed her PhD in Plant Biology from Washington State University in May 2025. Welcome to the lab and #UMSLBiology!🌲

I wonder how many employers might actually refuse to hire the post-ChatGPT generation or they might end up fired because they cant do the things their degrees say they can do

Id be very angry with universities for hyping gAI the way they have, if I was a student or parent, tbh.

People loading trees on a truck

Trees in a truck

People unloading trees from a truck

120 trees in pots, organized by species.

A HUGE thank you to Forest ReLeaf of Missouri and their Project #CommuniTree for the 165 native trees (33 species!) we picked up on Wednesday to plant on the University of Missouri-Saint Louis #UMSL campus. 🌳 🌲 We're planting tomorrow! #UMSLBiology

NSF is open again!

A few comments:

*Please be patient.
During a shutdown NSF employees cannot open computers or respond to emails.

*Merit review will continue. However panels won’t resume until after Dec 8th.

*POs remain excited and committed to advancing science and the scientific workforce.

Artisan cinnamon raisin bread.

Bread baking time! #baking 🥖

Group of people looking at the camera

A big congratulations to @jesse1.bsky.social on a successful MS thesis defence today! Time to update your BlueSky profile. 🎉

Leonard Cohen recites “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae | Legion Magazine youtu.be/cKoJvHcMLfc?... #RemembranceDay #LestWeForget

Interior of a train.

Skyline of St. Louis from a train.

I'm currently playing planes, trains, and automobiles to get where I gotta go! My flight for tonight was cancelled this afternoon.

I thought there was an online list/spreadsheet of ecology/evolution graduate programs that don't have an application fee (from back in the bird-place days). Does anyone have a link for it?

Food bank director: “for every meal that a food bank provides, the SNAP program provides nine. There’s no way we can meet that gap.”