Lawren Sack
@lawrensack.bsky.social
770 followers 1.3K following 160 posts
Professor at UCLA (EEB, IoES) fascinated by plant life and ecology. he/him/his
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Reposted by Lawren Sack
Reposted by Lawren Sack
ianjwright.bsky.social
Wind and frost have surprisingly strong effects on global patterns in leaf cuticle thickness! Latitude, biome and taxonomy matter too. Other climate variables not so much. #trait research from international team including @lawrensack.bsky.social @westobymark.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1111/nph....
lawrensack.bsky.social
For the connoisseur of plant traits: the environmental associations of kidney-bean vs dumbbell-shaped stomatal types and their implications. Similar climate associations of stomatal size and density for grasses and non-grasses across communities. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
lawrensack.bsky.social
Nice work! though I’m reluctant to needle anyone about leaf nomenclature, technically some of those angiosperm “needle leaves” are not leaves, but branchlets and phyllodes. Correcting the correction :)
Reposted by Lawren Sack
botany.one
How do parasitic plants find their prey? New study shows dodder vines use touch sensitivity and light detection to hunt victims. These master grafters even attempt to parasitize metal objects.

Learn more: wp.me/pdRZhH-m3g

#Botany #PlantScience 🧪
Cuscuta crawling over a hapless plant. The sickly yellow threads of the parasite are wrapped around the green of the victim like a thick spider's web.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
botsocamerica.bsky.social
Leaf functional traits, insect #herbivory, & fungal damage on early Eocene leaf compression #fossils, Dolus Hill, Wyoming

New #AJB research by Claudia Richbourg, Lily Jackson, Kevin Chamberlain, Ian Miller, Kirk Johnson & Ellen Currano

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #paleobotany
Image of leaf fossil with insect feeding damage.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
mireiagoga.bsky.social
We found environmental plasticity in Pinus radiata phloem under light limitation and foliar pathogenic infection, with a reduction in phloem cross-sectional area. Have a look here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... a collaboration between New Zealand and @umr-iam.bsky.social
Reposted by Lawren Sack
tinaschreier.bsky.social
🌿 Excited to share our latest preprint!
We tracked how plasmodesmata numbers evolved across the path from C₃ → C₄ photosynthesis in Flaveria - and found a stepwise increase in cell-to-cell connectivity.
Thoughts or feedback are most welcome 😊
#PlantScience
biorxiv-plants.bsky.social
Stepwise increase in plasmodesmata during C4 evolution in Flaveria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.18.649591v1
Reposted by Lawren Sack
evagril.bsky.social
The beauty of trees as lidar point clouds... 3D pixel art 🌳 🧊
Here, an oak forest stand from the North of France, with a dense understory. Voxelised with AMAPVox @umramap.bsky.social, from our terrestrial lidar scans!
@jonlen.bsky.social #EDYSAN @terschki.bsky.social
A forest stand visualized as 3D pixels, or "voxels", extracted on a 20 by 20 m square. It is dense, but the different tree stems are easy to distinguish. Voxels are colored by height, from dark blue near the ground to light green in the top of the canopy (24 m height maximum).
Reposted by Lawren Sack
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
OpenAI’s new image model is great at botany
Reposted by Lawren Sack
fishsqueezer.bsky.social
Wait, what? I took ichthyology in college, and at no point did they explain to me that the reason early vertebrates were dominated by cartilaginous fish wasn't simplicity, but because PLANTS had not yet released enough calcium from rocks for it to become bioavailable for bone development. 🤯 🐟🌎
a close up of a man 's face with glasses and red hair making a funny face .
Alt: Some dorky gif of John C. Reilly wearing nerd glasses and an afro while making a very surprised face.
media.tenor.com
Reposted by Lawren Sack
christhorogood.bsky.social
Balanophora is a parasitic plant that lacks chlorophyll, and steals its nutrients from tree roots. It lives beneath the rainforest floor, where once in a while, it sends up an orb that glows like the moon.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
botsocamerica.bsky.social
Endophytic #bacteria discovered in oil body organelles of the #liverworts Marchantia polymorpha & Radula complanata

New #AJB research by Blair Young, Barbara Thiers, James White, & Lena Struwe

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #botany #plantscience
A confocal microscope photo of the cells of Radula complanata with fluorescent staining of cell walls and oil bodies.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
journalofecology.bsky.social
🌿The architecture of plant trait networks is more interconnected & complex in communities with higher functional richness under less arid climates 🧪 🌏

buff.ly/iok0dnU
buff.ly
lawrensack.bsky.social
Simplification of woody plant trait networks among communities along a climatic aridity gradient - Camila Medeiros, Santiago Trueba, Chris Henry, Leila Fletcher, Jim Lutz, Rodrigo Méndez Alonzo, Nathan Kraft, Lawren Sack - Journal of Ecology t.co/F6VWVLJ6xl

@nathanjbkraft.bsky.social
lawrensack.bsky.social
The determination of leaf size on the basis of developmental traits - Zeqing Ma, Thomas N. Buckley, Lawren Sack - New Phytologist @tombuckleylab.bsky.social

t.co/EFgmQo1qWy
lawrensack.bsky.social
it's like a 300 item gratitude list on your fridge!
Reposted by Lawren Sack
janelangdale.bsky.social
A curious, modest man with an encyclopaedic knowledge. No ego but a quiet self-confidence that inspired many. No doubt many publications in the coming years will report innovative ideas that he thought of decades ago….
Reposted by Lawren Sack
jonlen.bsky.social
Very rapid #thermophilization & #xerophilisation of grassland #plant #communities 🌾🌼🍀🌸in the California Floristic Province #CFP attributed to #climate #change ⬇️ An important study relying on both field surveys & long-term experiments ⬇️ Congrats to Kai Zhu & team

shorturl.at/3FsVm
Rapid shifts in grassland communities driven by climate change - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Plant community responses to climate change tend to be lagged in forests, but could be faster in grasslands. Here, the authors integrate long-term experimental data with >1 million occurrence recor...
shorturl.at
Reposted by Lawren Sack
nathanjbkraft.bsky.social
Excited to see this paper from Mary Van Dyke out in press- she measures how rainfall manipulations alter the timing of the life cycles of California annual plants, and explore implications for species coexistence. Thanks to Sedgwick UCNRS Reserve for facilitating her research! #AJB
botsocamerica.bsky.social
Changes in flowering phenology with altered rainfall & the potential community impacts in an annual #grassland

New #AJB research by Mary Van Dyke & Nathan Kraft

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #globalchange
Flowers in bloom in a serpentine grassland.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
annbot.bsky.social
📣Now Free Access: The Agavoideae: an emergent model clade for CAM evolutionary biology
Get the Paper:
doi.org
Reposted by Lawren Sack
botsocamerica.bsky.social
mvh: An R tool to assemble and organize virtual #herbaria from openly available specimen images

New in #AppsPlantSci by @tvasconcelos.bsky.social & @jboyko.bsky.social

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @r-foundation.bsky.social @gbif.org #botany #biodiversity #iamabotanist
Eight herbarium sheets displaying various specimens of the blueberry genus, each with detailed labels and color calibration bars. The text above provides code for searching and downloading specimen metadata and images. Image credit: OUHC and BRIT herbaria.
Reposted by Lawren Sack
jencross.bsky.social
Here is a moment of peace for your timeline.

Little River, Great Smoky Mountains National Park