I’m headed to #PAG33 in San Diego, CA this week! Very excited to present a poster on some LTR TE family clustering titled “Full Sequence Clustering Reveals Hidden Structural Diversity and Evolutionary Dynamics in LTR Retrotransposon Families”. I’ve attached the abstract if you’d like to read more.
The registration deadline is fast approaching for probgen 2026! Abstracts due by January 15, registration by January 31
probgen2026.github.io
Annual guaranteed salary to MIT annual living wage. Only 4 programs pay above the 1:1 line.
Has your EEB/Biology department updated its minimum PhD pay for 2025-2026? Let us know here: rhettrautsaw.app/shiny/Biolog...
New paper just posted with @rschley.bsky.social et al: doi.org/10.1111/nph.... (1/n)
Big bluestem has been a lovely and complex system to work with for the majority of my PhD and will always have a piece of my heart! Very excited to share this work with the community.
In honor of @alyssa-phillips.bsky.social new preprint, here's me standing in her common garden taking a photo op to troll her with all the grass species in the plot that are *not* big blue stem.
If you are affiliated with a UC institution of live in a community that benefits from UC institutions, please consider signing this letter calling on UC Leadership to stand up to the Trump Administration. sites.google.com/view/ucstand...
My first first author manuscript has posted! I’m very excited to share SWIF-TE with yall. It is a fast, memory efficient tool to identify novel TE insertions from short-read data. 🧬 #TEworldwide #transposons
Check out our new preprint on aspen adaptive variation and phylogeographic history 🌳🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A focus on the futures we will lose if the WH continues to dismantle research across agencies spanning the EPA, DHS, NIH, NSF, USAID, and DoD (via NASA Watch).
When: Tuesday, July 8, 2025, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET
Where: Rayburn Foyer, Rayburn House Office Building
nasawatch.com/congress/con...
A cropped version of the same phylogenetic tree shown in Image 1, focusing only on a subset of organisms from Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica to Matteuccia struthiopteris. The geologic timescale background is still visible, with fewer early-branching taxa shown. The bottom text reads "#Evol2025 Day 2" alongside the Evolutionary Studies Initiative and Vanderbilt University logos.
A colorful phylogenetic tree spanning across the geologic timescale, with organisms ranging from bacteria and fungi to vertebrates and flowering plants. The background features labeled time divisions by eon, era, and period, using a gradient from pink (Archean) to pale blue (Phanerozoic). Blue dots indicate evolutionary nodes. The bottom text reads "#Evol2025 Days 1 & 2" with the Evolutionary Studies Initiative and Vanderbilt University logos in the lower right corner.
Here's the phylogeny for Day 2 and Days 1 & 2 from #Evol2025! Again, made in Time Tree. Is your organism represented??
Scattered teosinte kernels in their fruitcases, which are triangular in shape and a mottled brown in color
Pleased to share that my first, first-author publication was published yesterday in @pnas.org ! We (me + @jrossibarra.bsky.social) did a little bit of detective work to better understand the age and origin of a mutation that played a key role in maize domestication. doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (1/n)
Looking forward to seeing folks at #Evol2025! I'll be sharing some of our preliminary work on the 2,000 Aspen Genomes Project in Poster Session 2 on June 23 at poster A4.
"Evolutionary and ploidy-informed tools for quaking aspen management"
Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:
Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation
Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data
#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org
🧵👇
Thread with an email being sent to @asn-amnat.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social members today calling for a Tri-society week of action for NSF:
Dear members:
The tri-societies (ASN, SSE,SSB) are running a ‘Week of Action for NSF’. Your engagement is crucial.
TLDR: the administration wants to remove habitat loss from the definition of "harm" for endangered species, which will effectively gut the ESA.
I just commented. If you're in any way interested in ecology, nature, and the protection of endangered species, you should, too. Free daily action!
It's here and ahead-of-print at @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! 🎉 Our 22-page polyploid coexistence model is now available: doi.org/10.1086/734411
This work wouldn’t be possible without NSF support—including funding from an NSF GRFP, an NSF PRFB, and NSF DMS & DBI grants. @soltislab.bsky.social l
The consequences of polyploidy are... well, complicated. A deep dive into polyploidy in a massively successful tribe of grasses. A masterpiece led by Michelle Stitzer, representing the work of a lot of folks on the PanAnd project over last 7 years. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
