Patrick McKenzie

Major #Botany2026 FOMO, but the drive MA->OR starts this week. So, sharing from afar: I’m recruiting grad students for my new lab at OSU! Info: www.mckenzie-lab.org . We're going to have FUN with systematics, speciation genomics, methods, natural history, and more in North Am angiosperms. Reach out!

Check out this super cool *experimental reinforcement* study led by Graham McLaughlin and Brian Hollis! With @veronica-baquerovb.bsky.social !

BPP is hiring! come join us in @osubpp.bsky.social The Department of Botany & Plant Pathology invites applications for a 12-month (0.75 FTE), tenure-track Assistant Professor position in extension plant pathology. more at link below: oregonstate.wd501.myworkdayjobs.com/OSU_Careers_...

Yes!!!!!

Important paper by @kaplipa.bsky.social and colleagues. Advocating for the importance of Natural History museum collections in genomics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is very good news. ncbg.unc.edu/2026/08/31/u...

Pls share: We have a new position for an Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Biology at UNLV. tinyurl.com/4uhpav4j

I’m excited to announce that we are looking for a Curatorial Associate to join our team and help lead the L. H. Bailey Hortorium Herbarium at Cornell University 🌿 Please help share with interested botanists! jobs.hr.cornell.edu/us/en/job/WD...

All detectable ancient whole-genome duplications involve hybridization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.25.747000v1

Can’t wait to read this!!!

New work out, and so happy to have it in a journal with wide, interdisciplinary readship! I just presented on this at #Botany2026 and look forward to continuing research with this * very pretty * pathosystem in the coming years! I'm recruiting grad students for Fall 2027; be in touch!

Ok, BSA’s socials game is 🔥🔥🔥 I’m having huge FOMO missing out this year (life stuff, sigh), but I’m OVERJOYED to see the final face on this preview is former Coughlan lab undergrad- Quinn Evans- AND we just posted his honors thesis to BioRxiv earlier this week! Go Quinn, go!!!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Big #Botany2026 Monday for the lab: great posters by @botanicalbecks.bsky.social and Maria Aguilar (her 1st!) and awesome talk by new Burpee postdoc @devanijolman.bsky.social on her PhD work at ODU. #plantpeopleFTW

I'm looking for PhD student to join my lab at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (Fall 2027)! If you're interested in evolutionary genomics, conservation genetics, or biogeography, please reach out. I'll also be at #AOS2026 this week talking about sexual selection in small populations.

Are you passionate about #naturalhistory #collections? Apply for our open position for the Herbarium Collections Manager @utkherbarium.bsky.social. We will start evaluating applications on Aug 17, so get your application in now. #Botany2026 #herbarium #jobs

So proud of this manuscript- lead by the fantastic @henryarenas.bsky.social with two undergraduates (Cage Cochran and Quinn Evans) each doing a Herculean effort during their honors theses, and Hongfei Chen helping out tremendously with lab work. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share some positive updates: I successfully defended my dissertation, and have accepted a postdoctoral position starting this fall at University of Rochester. I'll be working with Mark Hibbins (@rejectresubmit.bsky.social). A big thank you to everyone who has helped me on this journey!

#RADCamp Latin America 2026 was a great success! Big thanks to our sponsors, instructors, and participants. 16 participants came from all over Latin America to learn and generate RADseq data on their own samples, and to perform analyses using ipyrad2! radcamp.github.io/LatinAmerica...

Tribble Lab & University of Washington Herbarium crew at #Botany2026!

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy. #evolbio #philsci 🧪 waynemaddison.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/s...

Slowly updating my website to a lab site and having way too much fun. GEEP lab launching in Spring 2027!

"Three roles for background natural history in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology: (1) as spark (motivating research questions and hypothesis), (2) as scaffold (supporting the conduct of studies), and (3) as substrate (serving as raw material for new research)." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Short but awesome trip to Mexico with a great team. Also, success: finding Monarda pringlei! It’s one of two red Monarda species (the other being the Appalachian species M didyma) and it is confined just to a tiny area in the mountains above Monterrey

I’m starting at Oregon State University this September as Herbarium Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. An absolute dream job and I am so grateful! Looking to grow the lab soon and will update here. In the meantime please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Let's go!!!!!!!!!!!

Thrilled that our new review article on animal hybridization is now up on EcoEvoRxiv! 🎉 Working on this review with @mollyschumer.bsky.social was a blast, and it was such a wonderful opportunity to catch up on all the amazing work in animal hybridization over the last few years!

outdoors time today. The birds are moving, the bugs are out, the plants are flowering, and the kids are tired

So cool to see our work highlighted here! Thanks @botany.one ! And, re: the question “were you one of the observers in our dataset,” besides in the paper supplement, there’s a full list of them here: github.com/pmckenz1/mon...

The United States National Herbarium is seeking a Lead Collections Manager! For complete requirements and application procedures, please visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications and all supporting documentation must be received online by 1 May 2026.

We had fun partnering with the Oregon Stater magazine to share a little bit about Mycology at OSU!! Each fall our Mycology class has a fantastic time collecting and identifying fungi on our field trips 🍄 🍄 🍄

Herbarium Sheets Are Holding Secrets Their Makers Never Intended www.botany.one/herbarium-sh... When you mount a plant on a sheet, you capture more than botany. A new paper reveals the unexpected historical treasures hiding in herbaria, and why closing them is a mistake. #Botany #PlantScience

My PhD paper on my beloved cycads and beetles on the cover of Science!!! Check out how we studied thermal infrared as a pollination signal, from molecular mechanisms to the wonders of behavior... science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our greenhouse lights/fixtures need to be replaced. What light systems are newer university/commercial greenhouses using these days? Are we shifting to LEDs and away from high pressure sodium?

Only two more days to submit abstracts for the Bay Area PopGen conference! Registration still open for the low low price of $0. bapg-conference.github.io

I am SO THRILLED to share our first fully-lab lab paper!!!!!! Led by @hybridzones.bsky.social & @hagarsoliman.bsky.social, w/ a major assist from @pfschwarz.bsky.social!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read more below, if you're curious (you should be- it's AWESOME!!!!!!!) link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

map of overall (radial) avg flowering day across all species, made using PhenoVision-labeled iNat data. Trying to figure out if I should be surprised by this or questioning my data analysis... is the late flowering in the west Sierra Madre well known? Fwiw, corresponds to rainy season there.

Successful Ithaca visit looks like 1) time in the Bailey Herbarium, and 2) birding the compost piles

Can't imagine what it'd be like to deal with TGCT as a child. Proud to be involved in this work characterizing the pediatric patient experience.