🎉Good news! The new paper ‘Drought stress influences foraging preference of a solitary bee on two wildflowers’ in @AnnBot by Annika Rose-Person and co-authors is now #free for a limited time. (1/7)
A 23-year study found that barley grown under organic farming conditions developed unique genetic adaptations, enhancing resilience to nutrient and water deficiencies.
Unlike conventionally farmed barley, which became genetically uniform, organic barley maintained genetic diversity, aiding adaptation to environmental changes.
Botanists analyze the role of pollinators in the evolution of flowers with various sexual forms
Botanists explore Darwin's theory on precise pollination in flowering plants. Their study reveals correlations between heterostyly, floral traits, and pollinators, supporting Darwin's hypothesis. This macroevolutionary analysis sheds new light on the role of ecology in plant reproductive mechanisms.
While I tend to appreciate folks who are working on accessibility, there is a widespread ableist attitude that disabled people should be grateful for whatever scraps of consideration, inclusion, and accessibility we get.
I have no obligation to feel grateful for that. Being considered, included (including in planning), and having my public university that I've paid for all my adult life be accessible to me is my right.
So while I do try to recognize folks who are putting more effort into dismantling ableism than others, I want to folks to resist the idea that a disabled person should just be happy a given thing isn't quite as harmful as it is in worse places.
Systemic oppressions train us to think this way - to defend hegemons, defend the systemic oppressions, and attack those marginalized for not being happy & content with the marginalization. #DisabledAndSTEM#UCAccessNow#PlantScience@plantscience
1st questioner asked how they knew to look at ferns for sources.
Their research time did lit review and found that in the 1970s there had been promising research on ferns, but they didn't have the technology at the time to make good on the promise.
Next speaker is Danelle Seymour from
University of California, Riverside on Mutations in citrus breeding and genomics. The opening slide is about Asian Citrus Psyllid and temperatures needed for "permissive spread". (Me: So you can see how climate change affects where an insect vector can be.) #DisabledAndSTEM #PlantScience #UCAccessNow #UCDPSS2024
It's been 19 years since the first huanlongbing (HLB)-positive citrus tree was found in Florida. Every tree in Florida now has HLB. There is currently no cure. They are using tetracycline injections in an attempt to control it.
But there is poor genotype to phenotype understanding in citrus at this time. There are no resistant cultivars commercially available.
There are some HLB-tolerant citrus rootstocks, but they still experience 30% fruit drop. Her team is working on enhanced HLB-tolerance in citrus.
Can selective breeding enhance rootstock tolerance to HLB? The influence of the rootstock on a common grafted scion that's susceptible to the disease.
Can we leverage genetic information in order to do this more effectively now and in future cycles of rootstock breeding? #PlantScience #UCDPSS2024@plantscience
"Scion mutations in particular and efforts to survey what the scale of somatic mutations is in a long-lived tree species and connect this to phenotypes that may be of commercial importance." #PlantScience #UCDPSS2024@plantscience
Audience questions. I gave feedback during the early registration process to be certain they provided microphones to the audience or repeated their questions. I'm happy to say they're doing that.
1st Q: What's the mechanism of rootstock-mediated tolerance?
Answer cont'd: (2) The other hypothesis is related to movement of sugars. The bacterium causes callous deposition. It blocks the vasculature. And if you can make this better in the roots, you know the sugars are moving root to shoot then you know somehow this alleviates the effects.
There's a short break where in-person attendees can network and enjoy each other's company, but online attendees have no chat area or other tools to do that because #Ableism
Dr. Gaut starts out pointing out that the difference between the plant biologist community at UC Irvine and that of UC Davis. UCI has 4 faculty under the umbrella of plant biology and 2 are retiring. They don't have quite the community we enjoy here at UC Davis.
He made points about how he feels UC faculty can work to improve that situation. @plantscience#UCDPSS2024#PlantScience
However, the species distribution models have a problem (so far). They completely ignore the potential for evolution. Positive traits and/or deleterious ones.
"How do you include evolution in these things?
How do we consider evolution and climate projection jointly? " @plantscience#UCDPSS2024#PlantScience
"I can't read that sign - I'm colorblind!" - Dr. Gaut, good naturedly.
Folks don't think of themselves as disabled, but accessibility is important at all times. Even when our institutions fence disabled people out, there are still disabled people in academia and our communications, infrastructure, and culture need to be accessible.
That's probably it for me today. The lack of consideration for disabled members of this department and school, the lack of equity in being able to ask questions live make it so tha tI might as well watch this shovelware on YouTube where it'll be uploaded later.
UC Davis' Plant Science Symposium is tomorrow. They didn't consider accessibility to disabled scientists despite knowing they had disabled scientists here at UC Davis, but I'm posting it because it's free & maybe folks can still get something out of it. @plantscience
@plantscience There can be far more serious mistranscriptions, some which will actually make the meaning the opposite of what was meant by the speaker. I've experienced this in courses I've taken that use auto-captions ("craptions") instead of human-made captions. #DisabledAndSTEM#PlantScience#UCAccessNow#UCDPSS2024
A disadvantage of how this Zoom webinar format is working is that the screensizes are set. The viewer cannot change their size to expand the one they most need to see.
STEM slides often cram a lot of charts and small text in one slide, which means you really need to have the slide at as large a size as you can get.