Rachel Kruger
@rachelkruger.bsky.social
PhD candidate at Binghamton University studying speciation in Monkeyflowers!
Lover of unintentionally funny signs, music, photography, well-dressed mannequins, nature, winter sports, and pre-loved things.
She/her | 🩷💜💙 | ADHD+
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Lover of unintentionally funny signs, music, photography, well-dressed mannequins, nature, winter sports, and pre-loved things.
She/her | 🩷💜💙 | ADHD+
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Pinned
Rachel Kruger
@rachelkruger.bsky.social
· Nov 25
Hello world! I'd like to introduce myself to Bluesky - I'm a PhD student in the Sobel Lab at Binghamton University interested in ecological factors influencing divergence and reproductive isolation. I study ecological #speciation in two closely related taxa in #Mimulus.
#evolution #ecology
#evolution #ecology
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Springer-Nature statement
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
Riding the Autism Bicycle to Retraction Town
Does anyone *really* know their Factor Fexcectorn?
nobreakthroughs.substack.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Springer-Nature statement
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
New #mimulus preprint! We found grandparental environments exhibit strong effects on the fitness of their grand-offspring and whether this was positive or negative depended on the historical environment, showing TGP is locally adaptive
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Transgenerational plasticity affects fitness and mediates local adaptation
Transgenerational plasticity (TGP) could be as decisive of a factor in phenotypic outcomes as allelic variation and within-generation plasticity. While TGP is often associated with priming offspring t...
www.biorxiv.org
November 26, 2025 at 5:42 PM
New #mimulus preprint! We found grandparental environments exhibit strong effects on the fitness of their grand-offspring and whether this was positive or negative depended on the historical environment, showing TGP is locally adaptive
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
New paper by PhD student Aly Van Natto! 🌾🧪
Ever wondered if a plant's early start (seed vs. clonal fragment) affects the rest of their life's trajectory? We did! So we tested it over 3 yrs. Seedlings grow & flower fast but die young, while clones play the long game
#PlantScience #ecology #evolution
Ever wondered if a plant's early start (seed vs. clonal fragment) affects the rest of their life's trajectory? We did! So we tested it over 3 yrs. Seedlings grow & flower fast but die young, while clones play the long game
#PlantScience #ecology #evolution
Seasonal life-history trade-offs differ between plants derived from seed versus rhizomes in Saponaria officinalis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.28.685121v1
October 30, 2025 at 2:07 PM
New paper by PhD student Aly Van Natto! 🌾🧪
Ever wondered if a plant's early start (seed vs. clonal fragment) affects the rest of their life's trajectory? We did! So we tested it over 3 yrs. Seedlings grow & flower fast but die young, while clones play the long game
#PlantScience #ecology #evolution
Ever wondered if a plant's early start (seed vs. clonal fragment) affects the rest of their life's trajectory? We did! So we tested it over 3 yrs. Seedlings grow & flower fast but die young, while clones play the long game
#PlantScience #ecology #evolution
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
I’m very proud to have published the article referenced here, which constituted one of my dissertation chapters. It was certainly a labor of love!
Rebreathing Semi-aquatic Anoles: Just a Scuba Tank… or Something More? www.anoleannals.org/2025/10/15/r...
Rebreathing Semi-aquatic Anoles: Just a Scuba Tank… or Something More?
Over the past several years, semi-aquatic anoles experienced a bit of viral fame for “scuba diving,” a nickname for their ability to rebreathe a bubble of air over their nostrils while diving…
www.anoleannals.org
October 15, 2025 at 6:06 PM
I’m very proud to have published the article referenced here, which constituted one of my dissertation chapters. It was certainly a labor of love!
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
New paper by former MSc student @christeinecke.bsky.social! ⭐ A behemoth effort to apply artificial selection on clonal reproduction in #Mimulus guttatus. We show that clonality evolves quickly, but not symmetrically in both directions, and multivariate life history traits are altered too! 🧪🌾
Life-history evolution under artificial selection in a clonal plant https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.01.679824v1
October 2, 2025 at 11:50 AM
New paper by former MSc student @christeinecke.bsky.social! ⭐ A behemoth effort to apply artificial selection on clonal reproduction in #Mimulus guttatus. We show that clonality evolves quickly, but not symmetrically in both directions, and multivariate life history traits are altered too! 🧪🌾
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Sign the petition to restore eligibility of 2nd year grad students to the NSF GRFP. They are being robbed of the opportunities to advance their innovative science. @chubicki.bsky.social
We've already got hundreds of students and mentors here, sharing how the sudden policy change has derailed plans. We're looking at formally "delivering" results to NSF leadership tomorrow, please do keep sharing and spreading the word: laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/
September 30, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Sign the petition to restore eligibility of 2nd year grad students to the NSF GRFP. They are being robbed of the opportunities to advance their innovative science. @chubicki.bsky.social
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Want to do disruptive science? Include more rookie researchers
Want to do disruptive science? Include more rookie researchers
www.nature.com
September 29, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Want to do disruptive science? Include more rookie researchers
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats."
—Albert Schweitzer
—Albert Schweitzer
September 28, 2025 at 5:51 PM
"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats."
—Albert Schweitzer
—Albert Schweitzer
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
We're on a roll: Super proud of this paper lead by Dr. Megan Frayer & GS Hagar Soliman (with a major contrib from GS Pia Schwarz): Introgression and Parental Conflict Shape Repeated Occurrences of Postzygotic Isolation @hybridzones.bsky.social @hagarsoliman.bsky.social @pfschwarz.bsky.social
September 25, 2025 at 9:29 PM
We're on a roll: Super proud of this paper lead by Dr. Megan Frayer & GS Hagar Soliman (with a major contrib from GS Pia Schwarz): Introgression and Parental Conflict Shape Repeated Occurrences of Postzygotic Isolation @hybridzones.bsky.social @hagarsoliman.bsky.social @pfschwarz.bsky.social
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
companies make it difficult or impossible to disable ai in their products because it is an authoritarian project made from a stack of consent violations in a trenchcoat
they don't give you a checkbox for "i don't want this and will never use it" because they know many people would check that box
they don't give you a checkbox for "i don't want this and will never use it" because they know many people would check that box
September 20, 2025 at 5:40 PM
companies make it difficult or impossible to disable ai in their products because it is an authoritarian project made from a stack of consent violations in a trenchcoat
they don't give you a checkbox for "i don't want this and will never use it" because they know many people would check that box
they don't give you a checkbox for "i don't want this and will never use it" because they know many people would check that box
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Folks on LinkedIn - you might notice an email about using your data and your content to train generative AI. If you'd like to opt out, the clicky button is here:
www.linkedin.com/mypreference...
(you'll need to be logged in of course)
www.linkedin.com/mypreference...
(you'll need to be logged in of course)
LinkedIn Login, Sign in | LinkedIn
Login to LinkedIn to keep in touch with people you know, share ideas, and build your career.
www.linkedin.com
September 20, 2025 at 10:28 AM
Folks on LinkedIn - you might notice an email about using your data and your content to train generative AI. If you'd like to opt out, the clicky button is here:
www.linkedin.com/mypreference...
(you'll need to be logged in of course)
www.linkedin.com/mypreference...
(you'll need to be logged in of course)
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Universities:
- Stop offering workshops on how to use ChatGPT to write papers
- stop using DeepL to translate your websites or make it sound useful for our research
- stop pretending AI usage is inevitable.
I don‘t want to work for institutions who can‘t employ critical thinking to new tech.
- Stop offering workshops on how to use ChatGPT to write papers
- stop using DeepL to translate your websites or make it sound useful for our research
- stop pretending AI usage is inevitable.
I don‘t want to work for institutions who can‘t employ critical thinking to new tech.
“university leaders … must act to help us collectively turn back the tide of garbage software, which fuels harmful tropes (e.g. so-called lazy students) and false frames (e.g. so-called efficiency or inevitability) to obtain market penetration and increase technological dependency”
3/🧵
3/🧵
Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia
Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these col...
doi.org
September 20, 2025 at 6:28 AM
Universities:
- Stop offering workshops on how to use ChatGPT to write papers
- stop using DeepL to translate your websites or make it sound useful for our research
- stop pretending AI usage is inevitable.
I don‘t want to work for institutions who can‘t employ critical thinking to new tech.
- Stop offering workshops on how to use ChatGPT to write papers
- stop using DeepL to translate your websites or make it sound useful for our research
- stop pretending AI usage is inevitable.
I don‘t want to work for institutions who can‘t employ critical thinking to new tech.
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.
Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
September 15, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.
Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
The threat men like him create for people like me is not theoretical. It's real. Daily. There is a direct line from their words to the fact I dare not step outside my front door in my home of 35 years. I need you to understand that, before issuing gracious platitudes on what reaction is "right". 6/6
September 11, 2025 at 11:31 PM
The threat men like him create for people like me is not theoretical. It's real. Daily. There is a direct line from their words to the fact I dare not step outside my front door in my home of 35 years. I need you to understand that, before issuing gracious platitudes on what reaction is "right". 6/6
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
3 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in Landscape Multifunctionality here in beautiful Bergen jobbnorge.no/en/available... please repost
September 8, 2025 at 10:54 AM
3 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in Landscape Multifunctionality here in beautiful Bergen jobbnorge.no/en/available... please repost
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Please share! I'm looking for a postdoc. The position is to lead one of the following projects: 1) regulation of plant specialized metabolism by cell fate, or 2) foliar embryogenesis in the succulent plant Kalanchoe.
Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...
Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...
Plant cells are totipotent, meaning individual cells have the potential to develop into a full organism, a property unique to the zygote for animals. However, in most species for most cells, plant cells are not spontaneously totipotent, since they must be treated with specific hormone combinations to unlock their totipotency. Species within the Kalanchoe genus is unique as they spontaneously develop foliar embryos that are fully realized plantlets with shoot and root from notches along the edges of leaves. We speculate that the progenitor cells that give rise to these foliar embryos are totipotent, and we are using single cell techniques to identify & characterize them. In addition to being a fundamental process for plant biology, we foresee unlocking totipotency has many biotechnological applications, such as faciliating genetic transformation and the development of synthetic organs of biomanufacturing.
cxli233.github.io
September 4, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Please share! I'm looking for a postdoc. The position is to lead one of the following projects: 1) regulation of plant specialized metabolism by cell fate, or 2) foliar embryogenesis in the succulent plant Kalanchoe.
Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...
Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
BREAKING: New York Governor Kathy Hochul is set to sign an executive order allowing pharmacists to prescribe and administer Covid-19 vaccines to anyone who requests them, regardless of age or underlying conditions.
September 4, 2025 at 10:36 PM
BREAKING: New York Governor Kathy Hochul is set to sign an executive order allowing pharmacists to prescribe and administer Covid-19 vaccines to anyone who requests them, regardless of age or underlying conditions.
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University*
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
September 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University*
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
🚨 Postdoc opportunities! 🚨
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.
Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.
Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September
📢 Post doc! Want to join our team?
We are looking for 3 post docs in biodiversity science, genetic indicator assessment, and ecological statistics for a fixed term of 2 years!
Come unravel the drivers and consequences of global change on biodiversity with us!
DL 24.9.
#universityofhelsinki
We are looking for 3 post docs in biodiversity science, genetic indicator assessment, and ecological statistics for a fixed term of 2 years!
Come unravel the drivers and consequences of global change on biodiversity with us!
DL 24.9.
#universityofhelsinki
3 Post doc positions in biodiversity science, genetic indicator assessment and ecological statistics
3 Post doc positions in biodiversity science, genetic indicator assessment and ecological statistics
jobs.helsinki.fi
September 3, 2025 at 12:30 PM
🚨 Postdoc opportunities! 🚨
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.
Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.
Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Fully funded PhD in #Ecophysiology at UBC in Vancouver! 🍁 Possible topics include leaf physiology, thermal ecology, microclimates, scaling, tree physiology, forest ecology, and more. Start Sept 2026/Jan 2027. michaletzlab.org
Please share!
#PlantEcoPhys #Ecology #Botany #PhDposition #GradSchool
Please share!
#PlantEcoPhys #Ecology #Botany #PhDposition #GradSchool
September 2, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Fully funded PhD in #Ecophysiology at UBC in Vancouver! 🍁 Possible topics include leaf physiology, thermal ecology, microclimates, scaling, tree physiology, forest ecology, and more. Start Sept 2026/Jan 2027. michaletzlab.org
Please share!
#PlantEcoPhys #Ecology #Botany #PhDposition #GradSchool
Please share!
#PlantEcoPhys #Ecology #Botany #PhDposition #GradSchool
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
We still need >60 plant submissions for the Botany & Dragons Bestiary! Please share the flyer with your students! #iamabotanist #plantsci #ttrpg forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
August 28, 2025 at 3:52 PM
We still need >60 plant submissions for the Botany & Dragons Bestiary! Please share the flyer with your students! #iamabotanist #plantsci #ttrpg forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
For those justifiably concerned/angry about this, there's a way to make your voices heard. Public notice and comment on this proposed rule goes through Sep 27
Go to this link and click "Submit a public comment" at the top: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Go to this link and click "Submit a public comment" at the top: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
August 28, 2025 at 1:34 PM
For those justifiably concerned/angry about this, there's a way to make your voices heard. Public notice and comment on this proposed rule goes through Sep 27
Go to this link and click "Submit a public comment" at the top: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Go to this link and click "Submit a public comment" at the top: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Reposted by Rachel Kruger
Reminder that all three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use (and the fourth will be, too)
All three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use:
- #Bayesian Data Analysis, 3rd ed (aka BDA3) at stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/
- #Regression and Other Stories at avehtari.github.io/ROS-Examples/
- Active Statistics at avehtari.github.io/ActiveStatis...
- #Bayesian Data Analysis, 3rd ed (aka BDA3) at stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/
- #Regression and Other Stories at avehtari.github.io/ROS-Examples/
- Active Statistics at avehtari.github.io/ActiveStatis...
August 11, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reminder that all three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use (and the fourth will be, too)