My lab has started building their own apps for data collection! Below is a link my informal course on how to get started. Here is an example of an app that we use to phenotype oysters. With the app we can also take a picture of the sample - the photo is automatically uploaded to the cloud and a link to the photo is automatically added to our database.

You too can do this! All you need is basic spreadsheet knowledge.
Intro Course from Lotterhos Lab:
https://youtu.be/HEHDmYub28g?t=24

A really nice illustration of the acorn from outer edge (top) through the fruit wall (the acorn shell; top half of each illustration) into the nut (lower half of the illustration), comparing the red oak group (Quercus sect. Lobatae) with the white oak group (Q. sect. Quercus).

Check out especially the hairs on the inner surface of the fruit wall in the red oaks, and enjoy this the next time you have occasion to cut open an acorn.

Korstian CF. 1927.

#oaks #acorns

https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=yale_fes_bulletin

Delighting this morning in this beautiful developmental series of the Quercus acutissima pistillate flower---the developing acorn---and the story of delayed fertilization in this cork oak relative. By friend and colleague Min Deng, Planta 2022.

Species across the oak family & relatives---beeches, cassowaries, birches, walnuts---stop the pollen tube in its tracks before fertilization. Rascals.

#oaks #pollination #fertilization #acorn #flowers #trees #microscopy #plants

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-022-03937-9

I cannot overstate how much time and energy we have saved by having a lab wiki where we record collective knowledge and solutions to common problems. Instead of trying to recreate something someone did two years ago it's a quick search and then often just copy-paste.

Here's ours: https://wiki.weecology.org/

… Will it be for them
as it was for us, impossible to imagine oceans where there are now
mountains? … We should have learned
from the grass, humble in its abundance, offering food and shelter
wherever it spread. Instead, we stamped our feet like gods,
marveling at the life we made, imagining all of it to be ours.

—Tishani Doshi, “Species”

If you know anyone who works with clay and glazes... here's an idea for an exhibition.

Make a series of large fired vases based on stick bug egg cases. Just look at them!

These photos are from the paper Evolution of Oviposition Techniques in Stick and Leaf Insects (Phasmatodea) James A. Robertson Sven Bradler and Michael F. Whiting.

https://www.tumblr.com/futurebird/697582937894453248/the-creative-variation-of-stick-insect-egg-cases?source=share #ideas