Louis Santiago

New publication on stomatal decoupling led by Zhaoguo Wang. I first noticed decoupling in temperature response curves in 2016 (tinyurl.com/k6dnhn94) and have been intrigued since. This study focuses on decoupling under experimental warming, showing interesting patterns
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Riparian and cloud forests are the ones that accumulate the most carbon in the Nicaraguan rainforest New research reveals that tropical ecosystems richest in biodiversity also store more carbon.

NOT ALL tropical forests store carbon equally 🌿

A new study reveals that riparian and cloud forests in #Nicaragua are true carbon super‑heroes🦸‍♀️, packing up to 4️⃣ times more #carbon than dry forests.

Led by 🧑‍🔬@guillepeguero.bsky.social @irbio-ub.bsky.social and O. Lanuza (UNAN-Managua)

Read more 📃👇

Forty years of tracking trees reveals changes in Amazon and Andean Forest diversity New research reveals significant recent shifts in tree diversity among the tropical forests of the Andes and Amazon, driven by global change.

environment.leeds.ac.uk/faculty/news...

Our new paper uses the Power of Plots to reveal how tropical forests are changing: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below!
Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

We can deposit our ideas in review papers, if you are the first one to publish a concept or hypothesis, you will get credit for it, even if you can’t get funding to test it

Massive update to the Global Wood Density Database out today @newphyt.bsky.social led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer. What an amazing community resource!
🧪🍁🌐

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Predicting the fate of tropical forests under intensifying heat Intense droughts have caused water stress and elevated mortality for trees in the Amazon, foreshadowing the future of tropical forests as the climate changes.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

True for me too

Science (all of it) peaked in 2021 An ecologist friend* noticed that the annual number of times he’s been cited grew throughout his career up until 2021, when it peaked. It then declined for a couple of years straight. Then it…

Really interesting and confounding trend reported in Dynamic Ecology - ecology citations peaked in 2021 and have been declining since. Continued impact from the pandemic? 🧪🌐🌾 dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/s...

Fully funded PhD opportunity in my lab to study threatened plant species responses to drought and heat. This is part of mu recently funded DECRA fellowship.

A Psychrometric Temperature Correction for the Positive Bias Observed in Stomatal Conductance Measured by the Open Flow‐Through LI‐600 Porometer The study showed that the LI-COR LI-600 porometer systematically overestimates stomatal conductance relative to LI-6800 gas exchange measurements, with the bias increasing at high stomatal conductanc...

🖥️ From Plant, Cell & Environment: A new psychrometric correction removes humidity-driven bias in LI-600 porometer readings, aligning stomatal conductance estimates with IR gas analysis. (Kyle T. Rizzo, Brian N. Bailey)
▶️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#PlantScience

One day in the lab, we accidentally discovered that the spines of a cactus 🌵 straighten when exposed to fog. I was intrigued and so were my collaborators. How does this work and what can be gained from it? Here are some of the answers in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Check out our new pub led by lab postdoc, Dr. Brad Posch! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

High‐temperature acclimation of photosystem II in land plants The effect of high temperature on plant performance and survival is a topic of great interest given the ongoing rise in global heatwave frequency, duration, and intensity. The temperature at which ph...

Congrats to @bposch.bsky.social for leading the writing of the New Phytologist Tansley Review on High‐temperature acclimation of photosystem II in land plants. @newphyt.bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Changes in upper range limits, lower range limits, and elevational range sizes of species distributions in the last seven decades.

Herbarium specimens reveal shifts in species' elevational ranges

Zu et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/VB8MUG...

PhD advert for Genomic and trait-based indicators of restoration success

Exciting PhD opportunity advertised by superstar colleague Prof. Rachael Gallagher "Genomic and trait-based indicators of restoration success" (collaboration with Botanic Gardens of Sydney). See attached image. Contact Rachael directly for more information (email in advert). Closes 30th Nov.

Assistant Professor- Department of Plant Biology - HigherEdJobs Jobs in higher education. Faculty and administrative positions at colleges and universities. Updated daily. Free to job seekers.

We are coming up on the closing date for an Assistant Professor of Mycology/Plant-fungal Interactions in the Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois - apply before November 1st!
See the link below for more details:
www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

How can we explore the future of the world's forests? Understanding the demography of their trees is key. In We took the new gen of global demographic vegetation models and held their roots to the observations. Thanks @annemarie-es.bsky.social for leading! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Drought and insects have killed an unprecedented number of Oregon’s Douglas fir trees during the last decade, costing billions in timber value, damaging infrastructure and ramping up wildfire danger.

What is Douglas fir dieback? Where is it happening? What is being done? tinyurl.com/5n9amvx6

Effects of Soil and Atmospheric Drought on Intra-Annual δ13C Patterns in Tree Rings https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpaf120

Wilkes Center Postdoctoral Program - The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy Apply to become a postdoctoral scholar! This postdoctoral scholar program will help create the next generation of leaders in climate science and policy. It endeavors...

Hi all! If you are a PhD or soon to be PhD looking for a postdoc in plant thermotolerance, I would love to discuss project ideas for the University of Utah Wilkes Center Postdoc Fellowship, app due late Jan 2026!
Msg me if there is interest. Tnx!

wilkescenter.utah.edu/funding-oppo...

🚨 Do not miss the chance to submit your abstract to the European Conference of Tropical Ecology at Passau! The Call for Abstracts will stay open until 14 October 2025. 🚨

There are 18 exciting Thematic Sessions and one Free Session you can choose from.

@Blueskyverse!

if you are interested in **plants and how they may live without water** join this fantastic virtual symposium organized by our NSF WATER AND LIFE INTERFACE INSTITUTE BII

- is free, and fun ;)

REGISTER HERE 👇
www.walii.science/virtual-symp...

Picture of a smiling person holding up a copy of a book.

First copies of my book are here!! As a new faculty member, I realized that in addition to my research job, I also had a leadership job…and I wasn’t prepared for that.

This book is the guide I wish I’d had then, with the goal of helping others now.
 
jenheemstra.com/book

Group photo from the AmeriFlux 2024 annual meeting, Berkeley CA

Come join us for the #ameriflux annual meeting, October 22-24 in Tuscon Arizona. Budgets might be tight, but community support is invaluable, and that's what this year's meeting is all about.

Abstracts are due next week. Check out the details here: ameriflux.lbl.gov/community/am...

It seems like loggers or logging companies would have known this, but maybe not.

It makes me curious.

Does anybody know if land with red pines was worth less than that dominated by white pines or whether logging crews preferred white pine over red pine because of this reason? (8/8)

Hiring/Seeking a *permanent* programmer in ecological modelling at my lab @unibonn.bsky.social. We mechanistically model plant communities, island biogeography, species range dynamics, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, diversity gradients, tropical forests, vascular epiphytes. Pls rt! shorturl.at/Bzzdt

M O I L A B - Join us! Join us! Our lab is based at the University of California, Berkeley, embedded in the vibrant and multicultural San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by astonishing nature!

Network, we are looking for PhD students and Postdocs on evolutionary and ecological genomics in 2025/2026

Join our diverse and welcoming lab at UC Berkeley & HHMINEWS!

Check job ads-> www.moilab.science/team/join-us