Laura Leventhal
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lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Laura Leventhal
@lauracleventhal.bsky.social
150 followers 140 following 36 posts
Plant evolutionary ecologist! PhD candidate in Exposito Alonso lab.
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lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Yay to spending time with plant nerds! Thank you for the tour and specimen viewing at @stanfordjrbp.bsky.social
October 22, 2025 at 8:59 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Very proud to present our first paper from the Moi Lab Carnegie common garden! @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social
lauracleventhal.bsky.social Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 20d
Synthetic experimental populations of Arabidopsis thaliana with differing genetic backgrounds planted in a 14-level precipitation alteration common garden.

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵👇
October 22, 2025 at 8:56 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Synthetic experimental populations of Arabidopsis thaliana with differing genetic backgrounds planted in a 14-level precipitation alteration common garden.

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵👇
October 22, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
mexpositoalonso.bsky.social
We are searching for a technician in Next Generation Sequencing!

Come to our lab University of California, Berkeley Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)

See ad:

careerspub.universityofcalifornia.edu/psp/ucb/EMPL...
An error has occurred.
careerspub.universityofcalifornia.edu
October 13, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
mexpositoalonso.bsky.social
Apply for our PhD program on Evolution Ecology Organismal Biology (Integrative! Biology)

Dec 1 2025 deadline

Check out the Flyer below for more information on our #MOILAB!

Link to Flyer
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org
October 13, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
jmkreiner.bsky.social
Human-mediated land-use and climate change occur simultaneously, but how do they interact to shape adaptive dynamics? Super excited to share the first paper from the Kreiner lab, led by postdoc extraordinaire @rpineau.bsky.social
October 6, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
majdabohu.bsky.social
1/5 ✨Proud✨ to see our review with Katie Peichel as featured content in Trends_Ecol_Evo, with my beloved alpine lineages of Arabidopsis arenosa on the cover. Hope that you find it interesting! doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.11.007
July 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
mexpositoalonso.bsky.social
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

🧵👇
May 30, 2025 at 5:56 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
An update: fully cracked, over easy.
May 30, 2025 at 3:25 AM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
botsocamerica.bsky.social
Undescribed species diversity in Brewer's #jewelflower illuminates potential mechanisms of diversification associated with serpentine endemism

New #AJB research by Kyle Christie, N. Ivalú Cacho, Jacob Macdonald et al.

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #biodiversity #Brassicaceae
Brewer's jewelflower (Streptanthus breweri) growing on barren serpentine soil in Lake County, California, USA.
May 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
frwildflowers.bsky.social
Today is the last day to oppose the gutting of the Endangered Species Act, I just did and it’s not hard:
Rescinding the Definition of "Harm" Under the Endangered Species Act You have successfully submitted an official comment to Regulations.gov. 195393 comments received. View posted comments Thank you! Your comment has been submitted
May 19, 2025 at 2:14 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
A fried egg poppy in that “just cracked” stage 🥚

(Matilija poppy or Romneya coulteri)
May 15, 2025 at 7:55 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
A special find was this chaparral clarkia, Clarkia affinis, which I only found one of and it was growing proudly on this large rock.
April 23, 2025 at 7:36 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
The *close up* of one of my faves, the white globe lily! Those hairs!
April 23, 2025 at 7:35 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Very fun spring wildflower spotting this weekend on a hike at Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve! 🌸🌼🌱
(peep Castilleja foliolosa, Dipterostemon capitatus, Calochortus albus, and Stachys rigida)
April 23, 2025 at 7:33 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
A forgotten soil cube harbors this hearty hermit.
March 10, 2025 at 10:03 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Excited to share my first first-author paper! 🌱🧬 'Planting Genomes in the Wild: Arabidopsis From Genetics History to the Ecology and Evolutionary Genomics Era' with Dr. Megan Ruffely and @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1146/annu...

#PlantScience #Genomics #Arabidopsis #EvoEco
Planting Genomes in the Wild: Arabidopsis From Genetics History to the Ecology and Evolutionary Genomics Era | Annual Reviews
The genetics model system Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. lives across a vast geographic range with contrasting climates, in response to which it has evolved diverse life histories and phenotypic ada...
doi.org
February 25, 2025 at 7:53 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Check out this funny Arabidopsis grown outside in our common garden at UC Berkeley. This plant experienced a lot of herbivory and the herbivorized center became very woody?
February 13, 2025 at 10:25 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Very happy to share this preprint utilizing herbarium specimens to examine how California wildflowers (Streptanthus and Caulanthus clade) respond to precipitation timing and amount. Proud to be part of this collaborative work led by Megan Bontrager with the team at UC Davis!
ucdavisplants.bsky.social UCDavisPlants @ucdavisplants.bsky.social · Feb 13
🌱Megan Bontrager, Samantha Worthy, Laura Leventhal, Julin Maloof, Jennifer Gremer, Johanna Schmitt and Sharon Strauss discussed the ways precipitation timing and amount can shape #herbarium specimen #phenology, but reproductive success remains buffered.
▶️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Relationship between collection day-of-year (DOY) and a) phenology and b) reproductive output. Collection day-of-year was represented in models as the number of days since September 1 in the year prior to collection until the collection date. In a), Specimens entirely in bud would have a phenological score of 0, and specimens with only mature fruits would have a phenological score of 1.Overall, collection day-of-year was strongly related to phenology, and less so to total reproduction; in each case, there remains much variation to be explained by climate variables (Fig. S3, this figure).
February 13, 2025 at 10:15 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Caulanthus inflatus among abundant superbloom at the Carrizo Plains. #bloomscrolling
January 25, 2025 at 1:07 AM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Beautiful premiere of The Land Around Us by several lab mates! This documentary followed their journey through learning about land and our relationships to it in the Bay Area from four local experts with different approaches to stewardship and perspectives on the earth around us.
December 10, 2024 at 4:50 AM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Little planting this morning at Berkeley field site 🌱🌱🌱
November 19, 2024 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
smwadgymar.bsky.social
Defining fitness in evolutionary ecology

A primer for learners at all career stages!
w/ @seemasheth.bsky.social, @emjo.bsky.social, Megan DeMarshe, Jill Anderson

Please contribute a Primer to this series! Let's make teaching/learning materials more accessible.

#Evolution 🌍🌎🌏 #PlantScience 🧪
Hypothetical fitness values for three genotypes measured as survival rate (A), reproductive rate (B; e.g., number of offspring, among individuals that survived, times the percent of seeds that survive), and a combined measure of survival and reproductive rate that can reflect lifetime fitness(C). In each case, absolute fitness refers to the performance of each genotype (e.g., rate of survival, seed production, or lifetime fitness), unadjusted for the success of other genotypes. In contrast, relative fitness is calculated by dividing each genotype’s fitness by the maximum fitness value across genotypes. Note that the rank order of genotype fitness changes depending on the fitness measure under consideration. Individuals or genotypes that reproduce earlier in life have higher reproductive potential than those that reproduce late (all else being equal). The pink line reflects the reproductive potential of a single individual or genotype that can produce five offspring at an age of 1 yr (as can all of its offspring). Ten years later, it will have produced nearly a million descendants. The teal line represents an individual or genotype with the same reproductive rate but that delays reproduction until 2 yr of age (as do all of its off-spring), producing only 3125 descendants in 10 yr. The gold line demonstrates that the teal individual or genotype would have to produce 25 offspring at age 2 to compensate for the disparity in reproductive output that delayed reproduction can generate. An approach for identifying alleles associated with fitnessin natural populations of a single species that occur in different environments. First, fitness estimates and sequence data are acquired for plant populations experiencing two different environments. Second, the association between genotype at each locus and fitness estimates is examined, shown here in a Manhattan plot. Statistically significant associations are those that are strong enough to surpass the significance threshold. Lastly, selection coefficients(s) for all variants in each environment are plotted against each other to investigate trade-offs in fitness across environments. Life cycle diagram for a hypothetical biennial species that germinates and grows vegetatively in one year and flowers and produces seeds in a second year. Repeated surveys of the population allow researchers to estimate the number of juvenile plants (Nj) and flowering plants (Nf) at each time point and to model three vital rates: the survival rate for seeds transitioning into juveniles (Sj), the survival rate for juvenile plants transitioning into flowering plants (Sf), and the number of seeds produced by flowering plants (F).
April 22, 2024 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Laura Leventhal
matinadonaldson.bsky.social
It's awful to think that Duke is giving up on their herbarium. So many irreplaceable specimens, and so much more to be gained from them as new methods are developed! If you agree, consider signing this petition to show support for the herbarium: chng.it/7NrcD4jNnM
Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?
The decision by Duke University to close their herbarium is deeply concerning. Herbaria are not just repositories of plant specimens, they are living libraries of life on Earth. They hold the keys to ...
chng.it
February 17, 2024 at 9:17 PM
lauracleventhal.bsky.social
Proud to be a part of this very cool paper!
mexpositoalonso.bsky.social Moi Expósito-Alonso (MOILAB) @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social · Oct 23
Postdoc Megan Ruffley just published a preprint in bioRxiv & medRxiv! which deals with a big elephant in the room in climate adaptation studies:

will genetic constraints between multiple adaptive traits within a species limit adaptation?

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#MOILAB
February 14, 2024 at 12:22 AM