Acer VanWallendael
aceraceae.bsky.social
Acer VanWallendael
@aceraceae.bsky.social
Professor studying the evolutionary genetics of weeds and invasive plants at North Carolina State University. Lab website: avanwallendael.github.io
🔥 If you don't account for missing data someone else will 🔥

I need this on a shirt. Programs that handle missing SNP data when computing PCA usually impute, and you need to be very confident that's actually what you want to happen (it's usually not).
August 28, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
Our EEB department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hiring an assistant professor in evo-devo. See go.illinois.edu/EEBAsstProf for details. Please share!
August 26, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
Really nice new highlight about our recent paper led by @aceraceae.bsky.social. "What a wild plant pathosystem reveals about local adaptation between hosts and pathogens and the implications for cultivated plant pathosystems under climate change" nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
What a wild plant pathosystem reveals about local adaptation between hosts and pathogens and the implications for cultivated plant pathosystems under climate change
Click on the article title to read more.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 25, 2025 at 3:26 PM
This thoughtful commentary gives some really interesting phytopathology context for our New Phytologist paper. Thank you for your words @wheatpath.bsky.social
Our @newphyt.bsky.social commentary spotlights the recent notable work by @aceraceae.bsky.social et al. on local adaptation of both wild plant and pathogen—prompting reflection for managing cultivated plant pathosystems under climate change ▶️ doi.org/10.1111/nph....
Hi #evol2025, our paper came out yesterday and I'd love to chat about it. We used an underused tool for studying parasite local adaptation, the Host Reciprocal Transplant, to study switchgrass and its fungal rust.

doi.org/10.1111/nph....
August 25, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
New work from Josephs lab grad student Asia Hightower
@puffballove.bsky.social
w/ Dan Chitwood & many many others on general, flexible methods for analyzing leaf shape variation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Procrustean pseudo-landmark methods in Python to measure massive quantities of leaf shape data
Premise When examining leaf shapes that are different from one another, it can be difficult to compare both the overall leaf shape and points along the leaf margin in biologically and statistically me...
www.biorxiv.org
August 12, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
Whole-genome sequences and field experiments focusing on the global invasive forage crop, white clover, show high levels of genetic variation across continents and parallel signatures of selection in five haploblocks www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Haploblocks contribute to parallel climate adaptation following global invasion of a cosmopolitan plant - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Whole-genome sequences and field experiments focusing on the global invasive forage crop, Trifolium repens, show high levels of genetic variation across continents and parallel signatures of selection...
www.nature.com
July 9, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Hi #evol2025, our paper came out yesterday and I'd love to chat about it. We used an underused tool for studying parasite local adaptation, the Host Reciprocal Transplant, to study switchgrass and its fungal rust.

doi.org/10.1111/nph....
June 24, 2025 at 2:09 PM
The florigen that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age
May 15, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
our perspective on desiccation tolerance research is out in
@naturecomms.bsky.social. with nearly forty authors from around the world spanning diverse career stages and disciplines, this work represents a shared vision for the field. let us know what you think!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Life on the dry side: a roadmap to understanding desiccation tolerance and accelerating translational applications - Nature Communications
Desiccation tolerance is an extreme adaptation to water limitation. Here the authors envisage a roadmap to advance desiccation tolerance research, highlight key knowledge gaps, call for standardizatio...
www.nature.com
April 9, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
📣Job Announcement!
California Botanic Garden, the largest garden dedicated to #CAnativeplants, is seeking a Nursery Manager to join our team! To view the position click the link: drive.google.com/file/d/1MGcA...
Please share! 🌱
April 11, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Weeds have evolved plasmids to house herbicide resistance genes (extracellular circular DNA), which is insanely cool. Previously, this was only Roundup resistance (glyphosate), but an amaranth pop. has been found with resistance to glufosinate on the same plasmid.
academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...
A rearranged Amaranthus palmeri extrachromosomal circular DNA confers resistance to glyphosate and glufosinate
Abstract. Some herbicide-resistant weeds become resistant by generating additional copies of specific loci. For example, amplification of the locus encodin
academic.oup.com
April 9, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
Excited to share that our protein editing method from the Muir Lab is now published in @science.org

We believe that protein transposition will enable new biochemical studies of PTMs and open up new intersections of proteins and small molecules

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Protein editing using a coordinated transposition reaction
Protein engineering through the ligation of polypeptide fragments has proven enormously powerful for studying biochemical processes. In general, this strategy necessitates a final protein-folding step...
www.science.org
April 4, 2025 at 12:35 AM
The VanLab grows!
March 28, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
We have a new paper out today, where, among other things, we find evidence that a locally adaptive chromosomal inversion likely trapped an even older inversion along its path to becoming the supergene it is today. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The Evolution of Locally Adaptive Chromosome Inversions in Mimulus guttatus
Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms are ubiquitous across the diversity of diploid organisms and play a significant role in the evolution of adaptations in those species. Inversions are thought to op...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
March 5, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
Late-breaking job ad: The Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC, USA) is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Evolutionary Biology!!! More details below. Please repost!
TT Assistant Professor of Plant Evolutionary Biology
The Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University invites applications for an Assistant Professor position in Plant Evolutionary Biology. This position is a 9-month, ten...
jobs.ncsu.edu
December 17, 2024 at 12:43 PM
I have funding available in my lab at NC State for a graduate student interested in plant evolutionary genetics, especially in weeds. Please email me by Dec 20 for full consideration. Details and contact info on the lab website: avanwallendael.github.io/#joining-the-lab
Genetic diversity in locally adapted, weedy, and invasive plants
avanwallendael.github.io
December 10, 2024 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Acer VanWallendael
So excited to announce our department is hiring a tenure track position in Forest Ecophysiology! Happy to answer any questions about the position!! Join us in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Penn State!
psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...
Assistant Professor of Forest Ecophysiology
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, a...
psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
November 14, 2024 at 1:31 AM
Got my new head shots back just in time to announce that I'm starting a lab at North Carolina State University in January! I'll be a genetics prof in the Weed Science program, with research centered on evolutionary genomics in weeds and invasive species

Ask me for info! avanwallendael.github.io
December 1, 2023 at 5:41 PM
Stunning frost flowers on the snakeroots this morning
November 26, 2023 at 5:22 PM