For more than a year, now, there’s been a hole in the Yoder Lab. Last March, postdoctoral scholar Lea Richardson was admitted to the hospital with neurological symptoms that were soon diagnosed as the results of metastatic melanoma. Lea spent the subsequent months in full-time treatment and recovery from the effects of treatments, and although…
Recently, the Yoder Lab has been thinking a lot about the conditions plant populations need to flower and produce fruit — that is, to reproduce and create the next generation. We hit on the idea of using images from iNaturalist records of Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia and Y. jaegeriana) to train machine-learning models relating flowering…
For the first time in years, Out to Innovate, the national professional organization for LGBTQ+ scientists, science educators, and technical professionals, is organizing an in-person conference: a community summit hosted at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles all day Saturday, March 7. The program will feature motivational talks and panels by experts in…
Joshua trees are ending 2025 by throwing us a curveball — they’re flowering! Many contributors to iNaturalist have recorded observations of the trees flowering in the last month or so. The normal flowering season for Joshua trees starts in late February into April. So these flowers are either very late for 2025, or quite early…
Joshua trees can beat the heat of the desert with the help of a special form of photosynthesis, according to data presented in the latest peer-reviewed paper from the Joshua Tree Genome Project collaboration. The study is the first “fruit” of a multi-year experiment in growing Joshua tree seedlings in experimental gardens distributed across the…
Diving into the Discourse is the CSUN news room’s interview series, featuring conversations with faculty and staff about their research and educational projects on campus. I sat down with host Carmen Chandler last school year to talk about the lab’s work on Joshua trees, their relationship with yucca moths, and the implications for protecting desert…
The recording of my talk for the 2025 IDEA plenary is now posted over on the Evolution meeting YouTube channel (there’s a bunch of dead air at the start of the recording; the action starts a bit after the 19 minute mark). A few folks have asked for copies of the slide deck, and you…
UPDATE: The live-stream of the talk will be available on the Evolution 2025 YouTube account, opening up at 6:45pm Eastern time. UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Here’s a followup post with the talk recording and a bibliography. The Evolution 2025 conference kicks off soon in Athens, Georgia, and I’m preparing not one but two presentations for…
Multiple Yoder Lab members celebrated graduations and accomplishments at the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Master’s student Pryce Millikin walked in last Friday’s commencement ahead of his planned dissertation defense in July, and undergrad researcher Daniel Dakduk collected his diploma after finishing classes at the end of the fall semester. A couple weeks earlier,…
Earlier this semester, the Yoder Lab PI joined Ellen Jarosz and Heidi Schumacher on their podcast Remnants of Resistance to discuss the genetics of same-sex attraction and our understanding of queer idenities. Jaroz is the head of Special Collections and Archives at CSUN’s University Library, and Schumacher teaches in CSUN’s Queer Studies — they’ve produced the…
