UPDATE: To allow reasonable time after posting this advertisement to relevant job boards, the deadline to submit for full consideration is extended to 6 September. The Yoder Lab at CSUN invites applicants for the role of postdoctoral research fellow. The successful applicant will take a collaborating role in a new NSF-funded project in ecological data…
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…
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…
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…
This is cross-posted from the Joshua Tree Genome Project website. Yoder Lab grad student Pryce Millikin needs your help observing Joshua trees to figure out where their specialized pollinator moths are active. Skip down to the three steps you can follow to help us, or read more background here: Joshua trees need our help. These…
Yoder Lab postdoctoral scholar Lea Richardson is taking on a new project, studying the other iconic plant of North American deserts — saguaro cactus. Dr. Richardson was recently selected for a new postdoctoral fellowship supported by the National Park Foundation, which provides three years of salary and research funding to conduct research in a National…
Revive & Restore, a nonprofit devoted to supporting the application of genomic data in conservation biology, funded the Yoder Lab’s sequencing of 300 Joshua tree genomes in a “genomic inventory” of the species as part of their Wild Genomes initiative. In the spring of 2021, Yoder Lab members fanned out across the Mojave Desert to…
The Yoder Lab at California State University Northridge is hiring a Postdoctoral Scholar to contribute to ongoing NSF-funded research examining Joshua tree’s adaptation to desert climates and coevolution with specialized pollinators, as part of the Joshua Tree Genome Project.
For years at the Evolution meetings there’s been a meetup of lesbian, gay, bi, and trans attendees — going back at least to the 90s. It’s called “Outgroup”, for the obvious phylogenetic double-entendre, and it’s operated largely unofficially. Someone would post a time and location during the meetings, over a lunch break or at a…
