Yay to spending time with plant nerds! Thank you for the tour and specimen viewing at @stanfordjrbp.bsky.social

We monitored these populations for 3 years, and found that population growth rate decreased as the treatments became more stressful. Further, "high risk" populations (either high load or low local adaptation scores) had a higher stochasticity for recovery after a single year of water stress.

Crucially, we found a significant interaction between load and local adaptation, which grew stronger as the environment became more stressful. This suggests a synergistic decay of fitness resulting from locally adaptive variants, globally maladaptive load, and high water stress environments.

We found that populations with a low number of local adaptation alleles or high mutation load had decreased fitness in our highest drought stress environments.

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...

🧵👇

Crucially, we found a significant interaction between load and local adaptation, which grew stronger as the environment became more stressful. This suggests a synergistic decay of fitness resulting from locally adaptive variants, globally maladaptive load, and high water stress environments.

We found that populations with a low number of local adaptation alleles or high mutation load had decreased fitness in our highest drought stress environments.

An update: fully cracked, over easy.

A fried egg poppy in that “just cracked” stage 🥚

(Matilija poppy or Romneya coulteri)

A special find was this chaparral clarkia, Clarkia affinis, which I only found one of and it was growing proudly on this large rock.

The *close up* of one of my faves, the white globe lily! Those hairs!

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)

A forgotten soil cube harbors this hearty hermit.

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?

Caulanthus inflatus among abundant superbloom at the Carrizo Plains. #bloomscrolling

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.

Moi is water Arabidopsis the same outside three years ago at Stanford and Carnegie

Little planting this morning at Berkeley field site 🌱🌱🌱

Coexistence at the Stanford field site! This little Arabidopsis is ready to flower, stay tuned.