Laura Leventhal | Lightnews

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 18d

Thanks, Brian!

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Thanks, Seema! And yes, here is a working link:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Simulated climate change magnifies genetic vulnerabilities from mutation load and maladaptation

As climate change intensifies, the genetic diversity and composition of natural populations will become critical for adaptation and survival. Standing genetic diversity within populations differs acro...

doi.org

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Updated link:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Simulated climate change magnifies genetic vulnerabilities from mutation load and maladaptation

As climate change intensifies, the genetic diversity and composition of natural populations will become critical for adaptation and survival. Standing genetic diversity within populations differs acro...

doi.org

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Yay to spending time with plant nerds! Thank you for the tour and specimen viewing at @stanfordjrbp.bsky.social

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Very proud to present our first paper from the Moi Lab Carnegie common garden! @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Synthetic experimental populations of Arabidopsis thaliana with differing genetic backgrounds planted in a 14-level precipitation alteration common garden.

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵👇

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

In A. thaliana and other plant systems, local adaptation is stronger closer to the equatorial edge and load is highest farther from the equator, which highlights a critical vulnerability: under strong selection, these high mutation load and low local adaptation populations may be the most at risk.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

We monitored these populations for 3 years, and found that population growth rate decreased as the treatments became more stressful. Further, "high risk" populations (either high load or low local adaptation scores) had a higher stochasticity for recovery after a single year of water stress.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Crucially, we found a significant interaction between load and local adaptation, which grew stronger as the environment became more stressful. This suggests a synergistic decay of fitness resulting from locally adaptive variants, globally maladaptive load, and high water stress environments.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

We found that populations with a low number of local adaptation alleles or high mutation load had decreased fitness in our highest drought stress environments.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

By using data from other A. thaliana common gardens and genomic prediction tools, we created synthetic experimental populations of A. thaliana that varied in their abundance of locally adaptive alleles and also in their mutational load.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Synthetic experimental populations of Arabidopsis thaliana with differing genetic backgrounds planted in a 14-level precipitation alteration common garden.

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵👇

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

Crucially, we found a significant interaction between load and local adaptation, which grew stronger as the environment became more stressful. This suggests a synergistic decay of fitness resulting from locally adaptive variants, globally maladaptive load, and high water stress environments.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

We found that populations with a low number of local adaptation alleles or high mutation load had decreased fitness in our highest drought stress environments.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · 19d

By using data from other A. thaliana common gardens and genomic prediction tools, we created synthetic experimental populations of A. thaliana that varied in their abundance of locally adaptive alleles and also in their mutational load.

Moi Expósito-Alonso (MOILAB) @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social · 28d

Apply for our PhD program on Evolution Ecology Organismal Biology (Integrative! Biology)

Dec 1 2025 deadline

Check out the Flyer below for more information on our #MOILAB!

Link to Flyer
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

Moi Expósito-Alonso (MOILAB) @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social · 28d

We are searching for a technician in Next Generation Sequencing!

Come to our lab University of California, Berkeley Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)

See ad:

careerspub.universityofcalifornia.edu/psp/ucb/EMPL...

An error has occurred.

careerspub.universityofcalifornia.edu

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Oct 6

congratulations! can't wait to read it!

Julia Kreiner @jmkreiner.bsky.social · Oct 6

Human-mediated land-use and climate change occur simultaneously, but how do they interact to shape adaptive dynamics? Super excited to share the first paper from the Kreiner lab, led by postdoc extraordinaire @rpineau.bsky.social

Magdalena Bohutínská @majdabohu.bsky.social · Jul 17

1/5 ✨Proud✨ to see our review with Katie Peichel as featured content in Trends_Ecol_Evo, with my beloved alpine lineages of Arabidopsis arenosa on the cover. Hope that you find it interesting! doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.11.007

Moi Expósito-Alonso (MOILAB) @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social · May 30

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:

Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data

#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

🧵👇

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · May 30

An update: fully cracked, over easy.

Botanical Society of America @botsocamerica.bsky.social · May 19

Undescribed species diversity in Brewer's #jewelflower illuminates potential mechanisms of diversification associated with serpentine endemism

New #AJB research by Kyle Christie, N. Ivalú Cacho, Jacob Macdonald et al.

doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #biodiversity #Brassicaceae

Brewer's jewelflower (Streptanthus breweri) growing on barren serpentine soil in Lake County, California, USA.

FrontRangeWildflowers @frwildflowers.bsky.social · May 19

Today is the last day to oppose the gutting of the Endangered Species Act, I just did and it’s not hard:

Rescinding the Definition of
"Harm" Under the
Endangered Species Act

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Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · May 15

A fried egg poppy in that “just cracked” stage 🥚

(Matilija poppy or Romneya coulteri)

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Apr 23

A special find was this chaparral clarkia, Clarkia affinis, which I only found one of and it was growing proudly on this large rock.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Apr 23

The *close up* of one of my faves, the white globe lily! Those hairs!

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Apr 23

Very fun spring wildflower spotting this weekend on a hike at Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve! 🌸🌼🌱
(peep Castilleja foliolosa, Dipterostemon capitatus, Calochortus albus, and Stachys rigida)

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Mar 10

A forgotten soil cube harbors this hearty hermit.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Feb 25

☀️ We conclude with recommendations for Arabidopsis outdoor common gardens and applications for studying (mal)adaptation with Arabidopsis in future global change experiments.

Laura Leventhal @lauracleventhal.bsky.social · Feb 25

🏞️ and finally synthesize all Arabidopsis outdoor common garden experiments (there were 73!!!), highlighting those that have contributed to our understanding of local adaptation.

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