Plant Science Bulletin archiveIssue: 2024-v70-3FALL 2024 VOLUME 70 NUMBER 3 PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN A PUBLICATION OF THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
In This Issue The Development of BSA’s Comprehensive AI Policy for Its Academic Journals....p. 205 New Editors-in-Chief Named: Sean Graham ( AJB) & Carolina Siniscalchi ( PSB) .... p. 197 Insights from a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Ambassador by Nishanta Rajakaruna .... p. 277 A Pair of SciArt articles focused on paleobotany! .... p. 259 Congressional Visits Day Report by Jenna Miladin & Cael Dant... p. 286 A Collection of Articles by Charles E. Bessey Teaching Award Winners ... p. 216 Fall 2024 Volume 70 Number 3 FROM the EDITOR Sincerely, Greetings, Putting together this issue of Plant Science Bulletin has been bittersweet for me, as it is my last issue as editor-in-chief. Serving as PSB editor has been one of the highlights of my career and I speak more about this in a short question-and-answer segment on page 199. I am very proud of this issue, as it exemplifies my favorite kind of PSB issue by including a little bit of everything. We have timely articles that focus on pressing issues in botany, including one by Theresa Culley and colleagues that addresses the use of AI in BSA publications and one by Caroline Bose that discusses why and how botany can become more inclusive and accessible. You will also find reflections by the two winners of the 2024 BSA Public Policy Award who attended the AIBS Communication Boot Camp and Congressional Visits Day in D.C. to promote science and botany to legislators. The highlight of this issue, for me, is a special feature on education in which several of our recent Charles E. Bessey Award winners share teaching philosophies and strategies. I was thrilled with the diversity of articles that I received in response to my invitations. I am also happy to include two final articles on the theme of science and art. Both articles look specifically at the role of art in paleobotany. Thanks to you all for being readers of Plant Science Bulletin. I hope you enjoy this issue! PSB 70 (3) 2024 195 195 TABLE OF CONTENTS SOCIETY NEWS Changes in Editors-in-Chief for Two BSA Publications..................................................................197 Ten Years of Plant Science Bulletin : An Exit Interview with Editor-in-Chief MackenzieTaylor.......................................................................................................................................199 An Exit Interview with American Journal of Botany Editor-in-Chief Pamela Diggle After a Decade of Service ....................................................................................................................202 The Development of BSA’s Comprehensive AI Policy for Its Academic Journals........205 SPECIAL SECTION HONORING THE TRADITION OF BOTANY EDUCATION IN THE PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN: A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES BY CHARLES E. BESSEY TEACHING AWARD WINNERS...................................................................................................................................................216 Four Things I Learned from 30 Years of Teaching (that you probably already know) (by Cynthia Jones) ........................................................218 Universal Design for Learning Botany (by J. Phil Gibson)............................................................223 Field-based courses still matter, but not like they used to (by Christopher T. Martine)...............................................................................................................227 Neo-natural history: careful observation and co-discovery in teaching botany.(By Joan Edwards) .............................................................................................230 Using Inquiry as a Tool to Help Students Develop a more Sophisticated Understanding of Frequently Misunderstood Concepts. (by Marshall Sundberg)...............................235 Don’t forget our roots: learning with drawing. (By Stefanie M. Ickert-Bond and Brett C. Couch)....................................................................................................................... 242 The two rules of great teaching: present with enthusiasm and make your students do the work (By Bruce Kirchoff) ........................................................................... 248 The Evolution of an Educator – (By Suzanne Koptur).................................................................. 252 ART IN THE BOTANICAL SCIENCES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE..........................259 Illustrating Cretaceous Park: First Steps Toward a Botanical Field Guide for the Hell Creek Formation (By Kirk R. Johnson and Marjorie Leggitt)................................260 Reconstructing the Botanical Past: Art and Paleobotany (By Edward J. Spagnuolo, L. Alejandro Giraldo, Mario Coiro, and Susannah Lydon) ................................................264 SPECIAL FEATURES The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program: Insights from a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Ambassador ..............................................................................................................................277 Twelve Pounds of Duct Tape and No Manual: Shifting Mindsets Around Disability in Botany............................................................................................................................................................286 Report from 2024 Congressional Visits Day ........................................................................................290 PSB 70 (3) 2024 196 196 TABLE OF CONTENTS MEMBERSHIP NEWS BSA Virtual Symposium on Climate Change: .....................................................................................290 Support Graduate Students with Year-End Donations to the GSRA Fund Donate today!.............................................................................................................................................290 Help Us Reach Our Goal of 100 Gift Memberships by December 31! .................................291 Three-Year Memberships—Stay Connected at a Discount!........................................................291 Botany360 Updates............................................................................................................................................291 BSA Sponsorship Opportunities.................................................................................................................292 BSA Student Chapters.....................................................................................................................................292 BSA Spotlight Series.........................................................................................................................................292 FROM THE PSB ARCHIVES.............................................................................................................294 SCIENCE EDUCATION Student Perceptions of Scientists: Preliminary Results from PlantingScience F2 Research Project...................................................................................................................................295 Master Plant Science Team Applications Open for Spring and Fall 2025..........................300 Huge PlantingScience Fall Session Wrapping Up............................................................................300 State-by-State Resource Update: List of States/Territories Still Needed............................300 Nominations for 2025 Bessey Award.......................................................................................................301 STUDENT NEWS Botany 2024 Recap............................................................................................................................................302 Grant Opportunities............................................................................................................................................302 Grad School Advice ...........................................................................................................................................302 Papers to Read for Future Leaders ...........................................................................................................303 ANNOUNCEMENTS Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands................301 IN MEMORIAM Pieter Baas(1944–2024) ................................................................................................................................305 Dr. Elisabeth Zindler-Frank ...........................................................................................................................307 BOOK REVIEWS......................................................................................................................................308 PSB 70 (3) 2024 197 197 The Botanical Society of America is thrilled to announce that Dr. Sean Graham (University of British Columbia) will serve as the new Editor-in- Chief for the American Journal of Botany (AJB) and Dr. Carolina Siniscalchi (Mississippi State University) will serve as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Plant Science Bulletin (PSB) beginning in January 2025. Both Drs. Graham and Siniscalchi bring to their new roles impressive credentials and strong commitments to Society publications. In concordance with the strategic goals of the BSA, Changes in Editors-in-Chief for Two BSA Publications DR. SEAN GRAHAM APPOINTED NEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY AND DR. CAROLINA SINISCALCHI APPOINTED NEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN they both are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion as an essential practice in all aspects of science. of Botany at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, who has wide-ranging research interests in plant systematics and evolution, and in particular characterizing plant biodiversity from phylogenetic and phylogenomic perspectives. His interests have ranged from addressing challenging higher-order relationships—both across and within the major lineages of land plants—to more focused systematic studies of closely related taxa. SOCIETY NEWS DR. SEAN GRAHAM DR. CAROLINA SINISCALCHI PSB 70 (3) 2024 198 He has studied the molecular evolution of plant genes and genomes, and the evolution of plant sexual systems. He has strong ongoing research interests in monocots and mycoheterotrophic plants. Head of the Botany Department at UBC (2016– 2021), Dr. Graham has served BSA Publications for many years, including as an AJB Associate Editor (2008–2017 and 2019–2024), and as a guest co-editor on two AJB special issues (“Exploring the Potential of Angiosperms353, a Universal Toolkit for Flowering Plant Phylogenomics” in 2023; the Charles Darwin Bicentennial in 2009). He has also played a publications-related leadership role, as he was elected for two successive terms as the BSA Director-at-large, Publications. In this role he helped lead the transition of AJB and Applications in Plant Sciences from self-publishing to partnering with the commercial publisher Wiley. As a Director, he was also a BSA board member, and he advocated to the Board for the creation of the AJB Synthesis Prize for early-career researchers (ECRs). He has also served in multiple additional official and unofficial service roles, including on the BSA publications committee and the publication ethics subcommittee. He regularly assists the editorial team with analysis of the annual Journal Impact Factor and has strongly promoted the need to increase the number of review articles as a key tool to improve our impact more broadly. This insight helped lead to the creation of an AJB “Reviews Editor” role at the journal, and was part of the motivation to establish the AJB Synthesis Prize.. in society-run scientific journals, which are motivated by science over profit. I therefore regularly publish some of my best research in AJB. I would like to find new ways to encourage others to do so, too.” Dr. Graham will begin his five-year term on January 1, 2025. He replaces the remarkable current Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Pamela Diggle, whose second five-year term concludes December 31, 2024. [See her outgoing thoughts elsewhere in this issue of the PSB.] Dr. Siniscalchi is an Assistant Professor and Data Science Coordinator in the University Libraries at Mississippi State University. Her main areas of botanical research interest are the macroevolution of the nitrogen-fixation symbiosis in flowering plants and the systematics and evolution of the sunflower family. She also has expertise in data science, bioinformatics, and research data management. Her strong background in systematics research and current position in library science are a unique combination that will bring new ideas and directions to the PSB. Dr. Siniscalchi received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. She has been a member of the BSA since 2017, when she first moved to the United States, and has attended five Botany meetings since then. She was a member of the APPS Reviewing Board from 2020 to 2022, served on the BSA International Affairs Committee (2019–2021), and is currently the Secretary/ Treasurer for the Southeastern Section. Dr. Siniscalchi’s vision for the PSB is that it will reflect the wide array of interests and diversity of BSA’s membership. “I want BSA members to see the bulletin as not only the place where they receive information from the society, but also as the place where they can talk about themes that are not strictly scientific but that are inherently part of being a botanist (and I use botanist here in the widest sense: not only as academics, but every person that has plants as the center focus of their work or hobby),” she says. Dr. Siniscalchi will begin her five-year term on January 1, 2025. She replaces the amazing current Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Mackenzie Taylor, whose second five-year term concludes December 31, 2024. [See her outgoing thoughts elsewhere in this issue of the PSB.] PSB 70 (3) 2024 199 Ten Years of Plant Science Bulletin : An Exit Interview with Editor-in-Chief Mackenzie Taylor What first drew you to take on the role of editor- in-chief of the Plant Science Bulletin? I was interested in serving as the editor-in-chief of PSB because I believe strongly in its role as a resource for the botanical community. I have always loved the variety of articles in the PSB and the fact that it celebrates the achievements of BSA members. I think, at its best, it builds community within the BSA and provides a place for important discussions to occur outside of annual meetings. Additionally, I wanted to provide a positive experience for others who wished to publish in PSB, especially for people rather new to publishing. My first publication was in PSB (Johnson et al., 2004), and I valued the experience of getting to work with collaborators and publish an article as an undergraduate. Marsh Sundberg, who was PSB editor at the time, made this a very positive experience and I hoped to pass this along to others. What were your goals as editor-in-chief? During my time as editor, I have had three primary goals for the PSB. The first has been to provide a platform for members and friends of the BSA to share ideas and knowledge in the realms of education, public policy, public outreach, and history. I consider the PSB to be the publication of record for the BSA in matters outside of scientific research. I believe that its pages should provide a snapshot of the environment in which botanical research and education is taking place, both for contemporary readers and for posterity. The PSB team and I have accomplished this by inviting many of the people who have given addresses to the Society or led workshops, either at the Botany meetings or through the Botany360 program, to prepare written articles so that they might reach a broader audience. Some of our most thought-provoking pieces have come from these contributions. I have also encouraged our Public Policy Committee to keep the Society updated on matters such as funding for plant science research and relevan t bills that come before Congress. When I started as editor, I felt strongly that the PSB could play a larger role in promoting and facilitating science advocacy. I think we made gains in this area. PSB 70 (3) 2024 200 My second goal was to provide resources for the botanical community, especially as they related to goal number one. During my 10 years, PSB has published articles with practical strategies and tips for preparing articles for publication, avoiding predatory publishing, submitting successful NSF grants, applying for Fulbright awards, conducting field work, improving scientific presentation skills, and moderating scientific sessions at conferences, among many other topics. PSB authors have contributed to the debate on issues such as plant awareness disparity and whether standardized tests should be used in admissions. We have continued to publish articles that present strategies for teaching in the classroom and laboratory, as well as for public outreach. Further, we created a section just for students. The student representatives share information and resources for student members and highlight the accomplishments of those members. I hope that PSB readers have found these articles to be useful. They continue to be available in the PSB archives. My third goal was to elevate as many individual voices in the PSB as possible and provide a platform for many perspectives. There is always room for improvement in this area, but we have made a significant effort to engage with the broad botany community. For example, our recent special issues on Art and Botany included an open call for articles; the response was tremendous, including from authors who had never published in PSB before. In another example, we asked the larger community, including on social media, for articles about dealing with the pandemic that stimulated many thoughtful responses. How has the direction of the PSB evolved over the past 10 years? Over the last 70 years, PSB has been continually evolving to fit the needs of the BSA. During some periods it has included more articles and essays and in others, it has been more of a newsletter used for disseminating news and announcements. Over the last 10 years, we have continued a trend to reduce the emphasis on news and announcements, mostly because these are more easily and quickly disseminated via the email newsletters. In turn, I have made a deliberate effort to increase the number of peer-reviewed articles in each issue. My goal was always one or two articles per issue and most of the time we accomplished this. I also wanted to diversify the type of articles published in PSB so that we were serving as much of the botanical community as possible. We decided when I became editor that we would continue to emphasize the print version as most of our readers indicated that they preferred that format. Near the start of my first term, we revamped the look of the PSB and created a new logo that I absolutely love. Ten years on, much has changed in the publishing landscape and the new editorial team will have to decide if it is time to transition to online-only publication or if there are new and better ways to reach readers. Whatever it looks like in the future, I am hopeful that PSB will only grow in value to BSA members. What do you consider your most rewarding accomplishments in your role with the PSB? There are many things I’m proud of regarding my role as PSB editor. One of the most rewarding to me personally was the series of issues that came out in 2020–2021. These were very volatile times, with universities and businesses shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the United States in the middle of significant political upheaval. I conceptualized and coordinated both the Summer and Fall 2020 issues from my dining room table because Creighton’s campus was closed. Despite this, I believe these issues are some of the most important in PSB’s history. We provided tips for educators and researchers who were working with reduced resources and attempted to provide a record of these times for future reference through special features (Taylor, 2020; Min et al., 2020; Gaynor and Valdez, 2020). We also did our best to lift up the voices of people who had timely and meaningful ideas to share about inclusion and equity in botany (e.g., Dewsbury, 2020; Leonard, 2020; Asai, 2021) and have made featuring these perspectives an ongoing priority. I am also very proud of the Art in the Botanical Sciences special PSB 70 (3) 2024 201 issues that were published in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024, although the hardest work was done by the guest editors for these issues and the authors. These were very well received and demonstrate the unique ability PSB has to cross disciplinary lines. What has been the best part of serving as PSB editor? Serving as the editor of Plant Science Bulletin has truly been a highlight of my career. I have found great joy in thinking about what topics members of the Society would be interested in and then working with Richard Hund to figure out how to best feature that in PSB. The best part has been getting to interact with people I might not otherwise have had a reason to get to know, including our wonderful authors, section contributors, and article reviewers, as well as our book reviewers and the publishers who provide books for review. Do you have any last thoughts? It takes a team to create the PSB, so I want to thank everyone who has contributed to the Bulletin during the last 10 years, whether as an author, contributor, reviewer, or book reviewer. I especially want to recognize all the student representatives and policy committee chairs who have prepared sections for each issue as a part of their service in that role, as well as Catrina Adams and Jennifer Hartley for preparing our regular feature on Science Education. Truly, Plant Science Bulletin does not exist without those of you who contribute your time and energy to PSB. Thank you to Amy McPherson and to the BSA Publications Committee for helping to develop procedures and sharing thoughtful ideas. Special thanks to Johanne Stogran for compiling and formatting each issue. She does an incredible job making the PSB look fantastic in print and ISSU format. Finally, it has been an absolute joy to work with Richard Hund, PSB managing editor. I know that the PSB issue will be in the capable hands of Carolina Siniscalchi, and I am excited to see what she does to move the Bulletin forward. REFERENCES Asai, D. 2021. The little red hen and culture change. Plant Science Bulletin 67 (3): 174-180. https://bot- any.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ PSB_67__3__2021.pdf and strategies from the chaos. Plant Science Bulle- tin 66 (3): 198-205. https://botany.org/userdata/Is- sueArchive/issues/originalfile/PSB_2020_66_3.pdf work, benchwork, and greenhouse studies during COVID-19. Plant Science Bulletin 66 (3): 236-242. https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/origi- nalfile/PSB_2020_66_3.pdf and D. Morningstar. 2004. What Works for Me: Undergraduate Perspectives on Professional De- velopment. Plant Science Bulletin 50 (4): 102-104. https://botany.org/psbarchive/issue/2004-v50-no-4. html sciences: relationships and reciprocity. Plant Science Bulletin 66 (3): 191-197. https://botany.org/userdata/ IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/PSB_2020_66_3.pdf periences during the COVID-19 lockdown. Special Feature Plant Science Bulletin 66 (2): 129-134. https:// botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ PSB_2020_66_2.pdf 12 BSA members during a global pandemic. Special Feature. Plant Science Bulletin 66 (2): 93-110. https:// botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ Art in the Botanical Sciences Special Issues https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/origi- nalfile/PSB%2070(1)%2020242.pdf https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/origi- PSB 70 (3) 2024 202 What first drew you to take on the role of AJB Editor-in-Chief? One (perhaps glib) answer is that Carol Goodwillie asked me to!! She was the BSA’s Director-at-Large for Publications and chairing the search committee. She was passing through my neighborhood and dropped by to discuss the possibility. I have vivid (very positive) memories of the occasion. We went for a long walk and talked at great length about the possibilities for the position. The other, more heartfelt, answer is that I had always been (and continue to be!) a strong supporter of the BSA and had participated in many aspects of its governance; I saw the editorship as an important opportunity to continue serving the society and botany. The American Journal of Botany also is of great significance to me personally. AJB was the first journal I subscribed to as a beginning graduate student, and I read the articles avidly. The growing row of issues, then bound in bright yellow card stock, arranged on my bookshelf, gave me a sense of belonging and professionalism. My first research paper was published in AJB. I also knew that AJB has been equally important in the careers of botanists across the country and internationally. So, as soon as Carol raised the possibility, I got very excited by the prospect and immediately began to consider what I might (aim to) do as Editor-in-Chief. What were your goals as Editor-in-Chief? I looked back at some of the documents I submitted with my application for the position and this sentence stood out: “The primary challenge An Exit Interview with American Journal of Botany Editor-in-Chief Pamela Diggle After a Decade of Service faced by the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY is the same challenge faced by the publications of all scientific societies: How will the Journal maintain relevance in this rapidly evolving world of diverse outlets for dissemination of science?” This is as true today as it was 10 years ago, and I continue to keep my focus on this challenge. One of my goals as incoming EiC was to increase the breadth of research areas included in the journal and to expand the geographic, institutional, and demographic diversity of authors and editors. To this end, I aimed to increase all aspects of diversity among the board of Associate Editors. AJB currently has 64 Associate Editors, 49% of whom are women, and who are in institutions from Argentina (1), Austria (1), China (2), Colombia (1), Denmark (1), France (2), Germany (4), India (1), Israel (1), Korea (1), Mexico (3), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (1), North America (39), South Africa (1), Spain (2), and Sweden (1). The diversity of authors is more difficult to gauge, but PSB 70 (3) 2024 203 we will begin to track self-reported demographic data next year and will be able to keep tabs on how we’re doing. I also aimed to “have the pulse of the readership”; to understand how readers and authors discovered articles, and what new and exciting research was on the horizon. I began to implement this immediately by holding a series of listening sessions (online and at Botany conferences) with botanists from a broad range of disciplines and career stages to understand how best to serve our community. These listening sessions have now been formalized as the ECAB (Early Career Advisory Board), which consists of advanced graduate students and post-docs who provide input and suggestions through regular meetings. I also wanted to bring new readers and authors to the journal by introducing a “News and Views” section in each issue of the journal that includes non-technical summaries of research papers (“Highlights”), brief essays on new areas of research (“On The Nature of Things,” now a regular feature of most issues), and a diversity of opinion pieces and commentaries. Also, as a result of a plan hatched during a 2-day strategy retreat, AJB now features regular review articles. I thank incoming EiC Sean Graham, who was at that meeting, for presenting a compelling argument for a reviews section in AJB. And I am so very grateful to Jannice Friedman for taking on the enormous task of getting this feature off the ground successfully and serving as Reviews Editor for over two years, and to the current Reviews Editor, Kasey Barton, for carrying on this important work with grace and enthusiasm. How has the direction of AJB evolved over the past 10 years? Both AJB and the scholarly publishing industry in general have undergone tremendous change over the last decade. The year I started, 2015, marked a full century of AJB publication and in all of that time, it had been self-published. Library subscriptions largely supported the journal and, critically, other activities of the BSA. In acknowledgment of changing financial models and challenges of competition among scientific journals for diminishing resources in library budgets, AJB, in 2017, entered into a partnership with Wiley and is now in a second five-year contract. We joined with Wiley at a time when they had a strong stable of Society journal partners, and we benefit from their scholarly publishing expertise and economies of scale. With Wiley we have been better able to adapt to the strong push in STEM toward Open Access, which offers great advantages but also tremendous financial challenges—for both authors and Societies. Major changes in AJB’s distribution have also occurred. In 2015, AJB was provided to members electronically and/or, by request, as a hard copy of each issue. Printing of the journal was discontinued in 2019, and now all access is electronic. The ability to promote and share links to articles to a vast international community of botanical enthusiasts was greatly expanded as social media exploded over the past decade. As the social media landscape has grown more complex, AJB, along with the BSA, is emphasizing more diverse, and less divisive, platforms. One thing that hasn’t changed is our careful copy editing, and the care and attention to detail that the AJB staff bring to each article and to our authors. undergone dramatic transformations and many new features have been added to the Journal, AJB is a Botanical Society of America publication, and as EiC, I have kept the mission to serve the society and to publish “peer-reviewed, innovative, significant research of interest to a wide audience of scientists in all areas of plant biology” in mind with every decision that we’ve made. What do you consider your most rewarding accomplishments in your role with AJB ? I would like to highlight my efforts to increase AJB’s inclusivity. As noted above, one of my goals as EiC has been to increase the diversity (in all of its multiple meanings) of authors, readers, and editors. To further this goal, all Special Themed Issues now include an open call for proposals for articles to be included in the issue. Early- PSB 70 (3) 2024 204 career and other underrepresented groups of authors are especially encouraged to participate. And, last year we ran an open call for Associate Editors. This initial call drew a gratifying array of applicants from across the globe who were interested in serving botanical research generally and the journal specifically. The demographics of the BSA and of science and society at large are changing rapidly and that should be reflected in our journal. Moreover, encompassing a broad and diverse range of perspectives and approaches is imperative for addressing the pressing issues of global climate change. What has been the best part of serving as AJB editor? Serving as the Editor-in-Chief of AJB has been one of the most gratifying and rewarding experiences of my career. AJB is so much more than a journal. It is a community of exceedingly talented people working selflessly to advance botanical sciences and to support botanical scientists. We all know that, despite our best efforts as authors, it is the rare paper that is not improved during the peer-review process. I have had the pleasure of watching this “evolutionary process” as reviewers and Associate Editors take the time from their already over-scheduled days to carefully read and comment—some even going so far as to suggest new analyses, and provide code and all! The result is inevitably a stronger/clearer paper with greater impact. We receive many notes from authors about the positive experience they had at AJB. I’m grateful for the generous work of all the many people involved, past and present, in the American Journal of Botany. AJB’s Associate Editors continually amaze me. They bring such knowledge and insight to the papers they handle, and each of them is dedicated to the success of the journal. And then, there are the multitude of reviewers who cannot be thanked enough for their contributions. A special thanks goes to the amazing AJB Managing Editor, Amy McPherson, who has very much been my partner over the past decade (and the leader in understanding the rapid changes to the publishing industry). It has also been my pleasure to work with the equally amazing Production Editor, Richard Hund , who handles all the “behind the scenes” complexities that turn your manuscripts into published papers. (And who gleefully smuggled chips and beer into the Botany meeting venue for our first several information-gathering sessions.) Talented Content Editor Staci Nole-Wilson (and past Content Editors Sophia Balcomb and Marian Chau), among other things, skillfully ensures that your papers have all of the vital sections and are ready publish. And, most especially, I thank all of you who have contributed to the success of the journal by sending your research papers to the journal! PSB 70 (3) 2024 205 In today’s society, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing and expanding through all aspects of our lives. The release of ChatGPT in November of 2022 made AI accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. After the explosion of interest and activity that followed, AI now has the potential to radically change our world as we know it. According to a recent Oxford University Press poll (Anderson, 2024), researchers across scientific disciplines today are increasingly using AI tools, but also have extensive misgivings about AI technology. For example, 76% of researchers globally currently use some form of AI in their research (e.g., chatbot, machine translations, AI-powered search engines and research tools), but only 8% trust the AI companies not to use their own data without permission, and 25% are concerned about AI reducing the need for critical thinking skills in science (Anderson, 2024). Most recently, publishers Taylor & Francis and Wiley agreed to sell access to academic content The Development of BSA’s Comprehensive AI Policy for Its Academic Journals By Theresa M. Culley 1,11* , Irene Cobo-Simón 2* , Robert L. Baker 3 , Aaron S. David 4 , Matthew A. Gitzendanner 5 , Matthew S. Olson 6 , Tilottama Roy 7 , William N. Weaver 8 , Pamela Diggle 9 , and Briana Gross 10 1 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati, OH 2 Institute of Forest Sciences (ICIFOR-INIA, CSIC), Madrid (Spain); Associate Editor of APPS 3 National Park Service, Fort Collins, CO; Associate Editor of APPS 4 Archbold Biological Station, Venus, FL; Associate Editor of AJB 5 Department of Biology, University of Florida, FL 6 Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, TX 7 Department of Biology, Missouri Western State University, MO 8 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, MI 9 Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, CT; Editor-in-Chief of AJB 10 Swenson College of Engineering and Science, University of Minnesota-Duluth, MN; Editor-in-Chief of APPS 11 Corresponding author: theresa.culley@uc.edu *Joint first authors to certain tech companies for training AI models, causing concern among the scientific community. AI itself is a broad term that refers generally to non-human (machine) intelligence (De Waard, 2023), but AI can be adapted and used for specific purposes (Zhou, 2023). Underlying many AI tools are large language models (LLMs), which are trained on large amounts of existing text data or visual and sound recordings to decipher written human language and create media. LLMs are most useful for translation, summarizing existing text, and generating requested content such as Q&A. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT use these LLMs with additional training to then create original content such as text, images, code, and even videos or music. AI can also be used in a process known as “inference” to draw conclusions from new data without depending upon only past examples. PSB 70 (3) 2024 206 Generative AI tools are already impacting multiple fields of scientific research and the publication of scientific articles. Generative AI tools include a wide variety of technologies, such as natural language processing (NPL), which underlies generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models, and image generation and editing. These tools can be used in writing to suggest text, correct grammar or spelling, or match a particular style of a scientific journal. AI tools are also extremely useful for data analysis; they can process large amounts of data with accuracy and speed, and identify patterns and information difficult to detect with traditional methods. AI can be used to generate code, automate repetitive tasks, and simulate experimental conditions. When used in these ways, AI has the exciting potential to propel science forward in ways we can only imagine today; however, its use also raises important ethical and practical considerations. Present-day AI-generated content can sometimes include incorrect, out-of-date, or nonexistent citations, or contain repetitive or inappropriate language, reflecting the biases/inaccuracies of the data on which the tools have been trained. AI tools can be used to manipulate images and may plagiarize existing text, but this technology can also be used to detect such actions with ever-increasing accuracy. For example, publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley now use their own in-house AI tools to check for AI usage in submitted manuscripts to ensure integrity of their publications. Recognizing the necessity of addressing the use of AI in the publication process, the Botanical Society of America (BSA) formed an ad hoc committee in fall 2023 to develop a policy regarding use of AI in its publications (American Journal of Botany, Applications in Plant Sciences, and Plant Science Bulletin). Committee members consisted of researchers selected from a special call for participants, BSA editorial staff (managing editors, production staff, associate/ reviewing editors, and editors-in-chief), and the BSA Director-at-Large for Publications. This committee was charged to discuss generative AI tools as they apply to publishing and to then develop guidelines, policies, and best practices for authors, reviewers, and editors of BSA journals. The committee specifically focused on the following three categories: 1. Defining how authors may or may not use AI when writing text, including how to properly acknowledge AI tools (if allowed in any cir- cumstance) 2. Describing how AI tools can be used for gen- erating code as a potentially acceptable use 3. Deciding how reviewers may or may not use AI in their reviews The committee met several times during the following months as individual workgroups focused on drafting sample language for each point above, and then as the full group to fine- tune the language. This AI policy established guidelines to promote responsible and ethical use of AI in scientific publications—aiming to harness the potential of AI while safeguarding the integrity of scientific research. The AI policy was then added to the Author Guidelines for all BSA journals and released publicly in spring 2024, with required disclosure of AI use on the author and reviewer submission forms. As AI continues to evolve, ongoing dialogue and adaptation of these policies will be crucial to ensuring that the BSA community remains at the forefront of innovation and ethical practice. The purpose of this article is to describe the key points considered by our ad hoc committee during our discussions, namely: (1) how other journals and publishers have addressed AI to date, (2) current opportunities and challenges of AI tools, and (3) a summary of our committee discussion that resulted in the final BSA AI policy. PSB 70 (3) 2024 207 CURRENT STATUS OF AI IN PUBLISHING Here we review as of April 2024 the current guidelines and policies of the top six academic publishers, as identified by Scholarly Publishers Indicators 2022 (https://spi.csic.es/), on the use of AI generated content (AIGC): https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics- • Elsevier https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and- standards/the-use-of-generative-ai-and-ai- assisted-technologies-in-writing-for-elsevier • Oxford University Press https://academic.oup.com/pages/authoring/ books/author-use-of-artificial-intelligence • Taylor & Francis https://asset.routledge.com/ Manuscript+preparation+guide.pdf • Springer https://www.springer.com/gp/editorial-poli- cies/artificial-intelligence--ai-/25428500 https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics- All publishers consider the use of AI an ethical issue. For example, Oxford University Press states, “AI must be consistent with the Press’s mission and the values inherent in our publishing, with all that this entails in terms of quality, integrity, and trust.” All six publishers agree that AI is a tool that simulates human intelligence, but is not an intelligent entity in itself. Consequently, none of the publishers allow a statement of authorship by any AI-based tool (such as ChatGPT) in scientific articles. This is consistent with the 2023 statement from the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE; https://publicationethics.org/cope- position-statements/ai-author), which states that AI tools cannot perform the role of an author of a work, nor therefore, appear in the list of authors of a work. As non-legal entities, AI tools cannot take responsibility for the ethical and legal aspects of the submitted work. Furthermore, Wiley and Elsevier point out the difference between the use of AI to make original intellectual contributions (without human direction)—which is not allowed—versus assistance in the preparation of scientific articles—which is allowed. Both publishers also point out the need for the authors to supervise the content generated by the AI tools. All publishers (except Oxford) state that authors are ultimately responsible for their manuscript content regardless of whether AI was used. All publishers also agree that the use of AI to generate content must be transparent and correctly referenced, as required with any other tool. Any use of AI must be disclosed in the cover letter to the editor upon manuscript submission and/ or in the Methods or Acknowledgments section of a manuscript. This is also consistent with COPE’s position statement on AI tools. Elsevier, Cambridge, and Taylor & Francis all state that the use of AI tools must comply with editorial policies on authorship and principles of publishing ethics (also mentioned in COPE’s position statement). Cambridge also emphasizes its anti-plagiarism policy, pointing out that any content generated by other authors and coming from AI-based tools must be cited and referenced in an appropriate and transparent manner. There is a lack of consensus regarding the generation or modification of images through AI tools. Elsevier and Springer consider AI-generated figures separately from the generation of other types of content such as text, and prohibit it, with few exceptions. While Elsevier does not provide any explanation for this policy, Springer supports their policy by stating that legal issues relating to AI-generated images and videos remain broadly unresolved; consequently, Springer is unable to permit its use for publication. In contrast, Oxford evaluates AI-generated images in a similar way to the generation of other types of content (e.g., text, PSB 70 (3) 2024 208 code), allowing it as long as it meets the criteria of transparency and is cited correctly. The remaining publishers do not consider the use of AI to generate and/or modify images separately in their Author Instructions; therefore, it is understood that they consider images along with generation of content in general. This is also in line with COPE’s position statement on authorship and AI tools, which considers AI-generated images similarly to other AI-generated content (text, graphical elements, data collection, and analysis) and allows it as long as authors are transparent in disclosing within the article how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are also considered fully responsible for any AI-generated content, including all of its ethical aspects. Several publishers have also developed policies concerning the use of AI in the review process. Springer stresses transparency in the use of AI tools during the peer-review process, requiring reviewers to declare any use of AI in their peer- review report. Springer notes that this technology still has considerable limitations (e.g., as described below, such as outdated information). Furthermore, Springer also explicitly prohibits reviewers from uploading any manuscript content into generative AI tools because manuscript text may contain sensitive or proprietary information. Both Elsevier and Springer note the rapid advancement of AI tools and therefore the need to regularly review their AI-related policies and guidelines. More recently, publishers Taylor & Francis and Wiley separately gave licensing rights to AI companies for their repository of past publications (Dutton, 2024); Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press are now forming partnerships as well (Wood, 2024). Taylor & Francis’ $10 million deal with Microsoft is expected to assist their development of Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant. Wiley’s partnership with at least two undisclosed companies was reportedly worth $23 million and $21 million; in return, Wiley provides access to its published material to train LLMs by using book content and small pieces of individual articles, and to make a narrow range of articles specific to a topic available for use in inference. At this point, it is unknown whether authors will even know if their publication has been used. Except for a few publishers, authors are not able to opt-out of having their material used in this way, which has created much consternation for many authors (Authors Guild, 2024). In the case of Wiley, the company has established guiding principles for AI technology and partnerships (https://www.wiley. com/en-us/terms-of-use/ai-principles). OPPORTUNITIES OF AI TECHNOLOGY Artificial intelligence and LLMs offer many new and exciting opportunities for researchers not only to enhance their science, but also to promote communication through the publication process (Buriak et al., 2023). One of the most common uses of AI by authors is as a “personal copy editor” to improve the quality and clarity of the language in their manuscript, polishing text created by the author. When used properly, these tools are not dissimilar to automatic spell checkers and grammar checkers. Even Microsoft Editor is now promoted as an AI-powered service. The popular Grammarly tool also boasts of an AI communication assistant to help authors pinpoint areas of weakness, such as typos, missing punctuation, or commonly confused words. The premium version of Grammarly is advertised as using AI to adjust the tone, rewrite full sentences, and generate text for over 1000 different AI prompts in manuscripts and even email. Other AI-based editing and rewriting tools include Wordtune (for rewriting, shortening, or expanding content), WordRake (which edits for brevity or simplicity), Writefull (helping to write and paraphrase scientific text), and LanguageTool (a grammar checker specialized for multilingual writers). More grammar checker and rewriting tools will undoubtedly be released in the future, especially as generative AI and the machine learning on which it relies continue to improve. PSB 70 (3) 2024 209 Such personal copy editors powered by AI may be especially helpful for multilingual authors for whom English might not be their primary language, particularly when submitting to an English-only journal. Some authors already upload their own text into ChatGPT and then review the rewording, grammar, or punctuation suggestions to enhance the clarity of their papers. ChatGPT can be used for any language within its repertoire, which now includes at least 50 languages, with more being added to make this tool increasingly accessible and useful. Currently, some AI-suggested text may still be scientifically nonsensical or inaccurate, so a careful eye is required before accepting and incorporating any recommendations (see below). However, with continued training, future renditions of AI tools will likely overcome these problems. AI tools can also be used by researchers to explore the literature when first embarking on a new topic, and to identify suitable references for their manuscript. When asked to provide peer-reviewed papers on a specific topic, ChatGPT provides a short list of usually five papers, but can be prompted to retrieve more. As with all AI-generated results, the papers may or may not relate to the topic and need to be reviewed further. Recent papers are usually excluded from the list, as dates of retrieved papers reflect when the AI was initially trained. For example, ChatGPT-4 Turbo released in November 2023 can only identify literature published up to April 2023. Other AI-powered platforms such as scholarcy (https://www.scholarcy.com/) help authors quickly summarize and organize articles applicable to their own research, increasing the efficiency with which researchers can search the literature. As more authors use generative AI for polishing existing text, there are multiple downstream benefits. First, the overall written quality of manuscripts submitted to journals may increase, making it easier for editors to ascertain if a manuscript is appropriate for the journal and should be sent out for external review. A well-written manuscript is more likely to be perceived favorably by reviewers, who can focus on the scientific content rather than distractions of misspellings, grammatical errors, confusing sentence construction, and general disorganization. Such a manuscript will also reduce the amount of copy editing and time required for conversion into a publication-quality article, increasing the efficiency of the publication process. For several years, publishers and editorial staff have been using their own AI tools to detect plagiarism and image manipulation, and to find appropriate reviewers for submitted manuscripts. BSA journals commonly use CrossRef's Similarity Check to review manuscripts for potential plagiarism. AI-powered platforms such as Proofig or imagetwin can also be used by editors and publishers to detect image manipulation. Publishers are now piloting AI to detect submitted papers generated from “papermills”—groups of individuals or an organization generating similar papers and submitting them fraudulently to multiple journals for financial gain. Editors can use AI to analyze a submitted manuscript's relevance to a journal, verify the identity of an author, and detect irregular publishing patterns by authors that may indicate fraud (e.g., a mathematician submitting papers to a medical journal). In a time where there are increasing numbers of predatory journals (Culley, 2018), AI can also be used to check the quality of references cited within an article. Publishers are also beginning to use AI tools to flag machine-generated content, especially when text may be translated into one language and then converted back in an effort to avoid detection (such as “big data” in English translated to “data grande” in Spanish and back to “greater data”). In a time when finding appropriate reviewers willing to read a submission is critical to the peer-review process, publishers are now using AI tools to locate suitable reviewers or to identify conflicts of interest (e.g., a proposed reviewer recently co-authoring a paper with the author) instead of a handling editor spending their own time to track down this information. In summary, incorporating AI tools to assist editors PSB 70 (3) 2024 210 and publishers can greatly decrease the amount of time spent per manuscript, while enhancing the quality of the review and publication process. Finally, when properly trained, AI technology can also be used to effectively conduct science. For example, AI-based models can be used to synthesize vast quantities of data that would otherwise require multiple people and many hours of labor. Such synthesis also minimizes the chance of mistakes being made and enhances consistency of any particular process. The power of AI can also be harnessed to identify patterns and relationships within large data sets that would otherwise be difficult and time consuming to detect. For example, LLMs can now be used to interpret text in digitized images of herbarium specimen labels (Weaver and Smith, 2023; Weaver et al., 2023). Another example is the revolutionary and recently developed AI program AlphaFold 3, which is able to predict the structure and interactions of proteins with other molecules such as DNA and RNA with unprecedented precision and accuracy (Abramson et al., 2024). AI can also be used as an additional overlay to identify any information that otherwise would regularly go undetected. Finally, AI can check code or even generate code within an experiment that would take a human many hours to create. In summary, the advantages of using AI within the scientific process itself are many, provided of course that all results are supervised and checked by the researcher themselves. CHALLENGES OF AI TECHNOLOGY While AI poses exciting and innovative opportunities, it is not without serious concerns and challenges in the publication process, particularly when used incorrectly. Many of these concerns can be avoided by treating AI as a tool to assist human decisions and by recognizing the inherent limitations of AI, most of which reflect the underlying machine-learning and training technology. On the most basic level, AI technology can be prone to inherent errors such as incorrect, nonsensical, or blatantly false output (Davis, 2023). Citations may be incorrect, incomplete, or outdated because the AI tool is limited by its most recent training date. AI can also be weak at judging whether an unusual outcome is “spurious, anomalous or groundbreaking” (Buriak et al., 2023). Even the ability to detect a typical outcome will depend solely on the data provided to the tool during its training—hence the strength of any current AI tool will always be temporally and contextually limited. AI-generated tools are also known for sometimes creating shallow and superficial text with a superfluous tone. There are now detectors that can be used to identify such AI-generated text, such as Turnitin, TraceGPT, Hive, and GPTZero, but their effectiveness, accuracy, and cost can vary (Walters, 2023). In addition, inadvertent errors could occur if generative AI incorporates phrases that are not in the author’s native language that may have an alternative meaning in another language that is not understood by the author (e.g., “background research” vs. “doing research in the background”). Finally, while AI can be effective at summarizing past studies (assuming it is able to detect all relevant content), the technology at the current time is still unable to look forward in time and provide a critical assessment of a topic and articulate next steps. These types of errors are especially concerning if readers assume AI- generated text is of human origin (Buriak et al., 2023). Such inaccurate information would also be very worrisome if it escapes detection by reviewers and is then published in a peer-reviewed journal, earning a scientific stamp of approval. In short, current AI technology is limited because it lacks human intuition and the ability to detect nuances and to conclusively project into the future. Another major concern with the use of AI technology in the publication process involves confidentiality. When reviewers are asked to read a submission for a peer-reviewed journal, they must agree to confidentiality and not share the author’s work or ideas. However, confidentiality PSB 70 (3) 2024 211 could be violated if a reviewer uses generative AI to compose their written review by uploading part or all of the submitted manuscript into an AI tool. Although this is now starting to change, some popular AI tools may still incorporate text that has been entered into the search window in the subsequent training of its tool or technology, such that the same text or idea could potentially be suggested by the tool to another user in response to a related query. A potential solution is the use of private generative AI tools within individual laboratories in which training data are kept in- house; however, even a private generative AI tool may suffer from many of the same challenges outlined above. Using a private tool to generate a brief summary of the manuscript, as typically presented at the top of a formal review, could be helpful though, provided the platform is used with human oversight. AI tools may also express inherent biases based on the algorithm and training data used to create the tool. Such bias can be sexist, racist, or even political, depending on what content was used in the initial training. For example, ChatGPT replicated gender bias when asked to construct recommendation letters for males (which used nouns such as “expert” and “integrity” and adjectives like “respectful” and “reputable”) and females (emphasizing “beauty” or “delight” and who were “stunning” and “emotional”) (Wan et al., 2023). In another example where ChatGPT was asked to create a crime drama, researchers used four-word prompts, only one of which changed (either “black” or “white”), to explore ChatGPT’s potential implicit bias (Piers, 2024). Motoki et al. (2023) also found that ChatGPT exhibits left- leaning political tendencies, such as towards Democrats in the United States, the Workers’ Party in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. The reason for these biases is that many LLMs use data from the internet for their training, which largely reflects historical stereotypes and perspectives already present online. Thus, if left unchecked, the use of ChatGPT and other LLMs could inadvertently amplify existing and historical information on the internet and social media. DEVELOPMENT OF THE BSA POLICY ON AI TECHNOLOGY Our ad hoc committee met several times in 2023 and 2024 to discuss the ethical use of AI in the publishing process. We examined every aspect of the development of a research project: initial conceptualization, data collection, integration and analysis, interpretation and presentation of data, and writing the manuscript. Going into these discussions, many of our committee members were initially skeptical of using AI in the publication process due to its inherent limitations (see above) and the possibility of authors using it unscrupulously to fabricate text. In fact, several of us started the conversation thinking about excluding all elements of AI from the publication process but, as explained below, eventually we changed our minds. Ultimately, we agreed that there was no part of the scientific process for which AI should be banned because it has the potential to help in every aspect, if used appropriately. We recognized that there is no AI tool that is inherently beneficial or detrimental; it depends on how a given tool is used and the extent to which the user is aware of each tool’s limitations. AI has the potential to make research more thorough by uncovering additional information beyond an author’s immediate knowledge. Thus, we agreed that the development of guidelines for authors and reviewers for the publication process is key to taking advantage of this novel and promising technology, while avoiding its potential drawbacks. We also recognized that the AI field is rapidly advancing with constantly evolving tools such that what we perceive today as cutting-edge may quickly become routine in the months and years to come. The AI of tomorrow will likely be different from the AI of today because machine learning algorithms and technology are rapidly improving. Consequently, our committee understood that any AI publication policy developed now will need to be revisited and modified in the future as AI technology changes. PSB 70 (3) 2024 212 CONSIDERATIONS FOR AUTHOR GUIDELINES We all agreed at the onset that AI cannot be an author because a non-human entity cannot take responsibility for a paper. There must be human oversight of any AI assistance; it is imperative for authors to take full responsibility for any inclusion of AI-generated material in their research studies and manuscripts. Just as before AI was available, we trust authors to adhere to ethical standards while conducting their studies and writing their manuscripts. However, we also recognize that guidance and specific policy are necessary to prevent any intentional or inadvertent violations within the new AI landscape. Just as it is critical to specify when AI is not allowed, it is also important to spell out any approved uses of AI tools. We largely agreed with what publishers have already been doing: AI tools can enhance the quality of a manuscript in terms of grammar and sentence structure if it is used to polish an author’s own words. AI can expand the information available to authors in the literature and locate otherwise difficult-to-find sources, and it can be used to help initially develop a research idea. If AI is used in any part of the paper, the reviewer should also be aware and take the time to confirm the accuracy and any potential biases of any AI-based information in the article. AI should never be used in isolation to produce text without human oversight or input. We discussed whether the use of AI should be acknowledged in a manuscript through in-text citations or in the acknowledgments section, or if it only needs to be reported through the journal submission portal. These discussions focused on the question of who benefits from knowing that AI was used, and why they need to know. For uses related to improving the author’s original writing, acknowledging AI software seemed unnecessary, and akin to acknowledging ubiquitous tools such as spell check within Microsoft Word. However, when the AI software was a critical component of the research, such as for image analysis, we deemed it necessary to acknowledge the AI software and version. Finally, because these are still early days for generative AI, we decided to include a question in the submission portal about AI use to better understand how often researchers incorporate AI in their manuscripts. This information would be used only for data collection and would not be passed on to the reviewers or editors. We also considered the use of AI in code development. We determined that using AI tools to derive code is no different than adapting R code found online for a user’s specific purpose. However, while AI could be helpful in identifying holes or inconsistencies in a researcher’s code, it should not be used in stress-testing that code. We eventually agreed that AI-generated code can be used, provided that the authors acknowledge the AI assistance and detail its usage in the Methods section. An acknowledgment in the Methods section suffices if the AI was used for writing functions, adding documentation, or refactoring code for clarity. For example: We used OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o to generate the initial implementation of the data processing function and to add inline documentation for improved readability. These tasks are comparable to assistance gained through Google searches or consulting Stackoverflow, where authors remain responsible for the accuracy and correctness of the code. However, a detailed explanation of AI usage is required when AI is used to automate analyses, such as performing statistical analyses on tabular data (see https://help.openai.com/en/ articles/8437071-data-analysis-with-chatgpt). For instance: We used OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o data analysis tool (gpt-4o-2024-05-13) to perform statistical analyses on our dataset, including generating summary statistics and visualizations. The AI tool›s methodology and output were reviewed and validated by the authors to ensure accuracy. PSB 70 (3) 2024 213 In this example, the AI tool must be cited in a way that ensures the reproducibility of results because the AI significantly contributed to the analysis. CONSIDERATIONS FOR REVIEWER GUIDELINES Our committee also considered the use of AI in the review process. We decided that it does not help the journal or authors when the reviewer extensively uses AI to write their full review. The point of having peer reviewers is to obtain the researcher’s own unique expertise, which any General Author Guidelines Use of artificial intelligence and large language models (generative AI): Generative AI programs, such as ChatGPT, are widely accessible and commonly adopted across various scientific domains. When employing generative AI in scientific work, writing, or figure generation, it is crucial for authors to be aware that unintended content may arise, necessitating careful oversight. Authors must assume full responsibility for content produced by generative AI programs before incorporating it into the submitted manuscript. Authors are requested to cite the use of generative AI when appropriate. For example, if generative AI is employed as an integral part of the methodology, it should be cited in the Methods section, specifying the manner of use, program, and version. The use of AI to address editing and proofreading does not require acknowledgement in the manuscript. Please see Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics (https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html) for more information.
For Reviewers: At (AJB/APPS/PSB), we highly value the professional expertise of peer reviewers to improve manuscripts published by the journal. Artificial intelligence (AI), including large language models or generative AI such as ChatGPT, is not allowed in the reviewing process. Uploading any author-submitted text, including the manuscript, abstract, or title, into an AI platform is considered a violation of confidentiality. The only exception is using AI as a tool to edit or proofread the language of a reviewer’s own work. Regarding Software and Code: AI coding assistants have become increasingly powerful and commonplace. However, authors must be vigilant about the quality and accuracy of the generated code and take full responsibility for the results. Furthermore, authors who choose to use AI coding assistants are encouraged to take full advantage of their capabilities to generate tests, write documentation, and create robust, user-friendly, functional programs that can be more easily maintained and repurposed. In cases where AI is an integral part of the methods of the study, the authors should cite the program within the Methods section. AI tool would lack. To abide by an AI program’s usage guidelines (such as for ChatGPT), reviewers should not input the manuscript or any part of it into a public AI tool because this would also be a breach of confidentiality. However, reviewers could potentially improve the spelling and grammar of their own written review using an AI tool, akin to a grammar or spell checker. Based on these conversations, our ad-hoc committee created AI policy for BSA journals as shown in the following box. PSB 70 (3) 2024 214 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank Amy McPherson (managing editor of AJB), Beth Parada (managing editor of APPS), Richard Hund (production editor of AJB/ managing editor of PSB), and Emily Sessa (BSA Director at Large for Publications) for their insight during committee discussions and for their careful review of this paper. REFERENCES Abramson, J., J. Adler, J. Dunger, R. Evans, T. Green, A. Pritzil, O. Ronneberger, et al. 2024. Accurate struc- ture prediction of biomolecular interactions with Al- phaFold 3. Nature 630: 493-500. University Press Study. Website: https://publishingper- spectives.com/2024/05/academic-writers-on-ai-an-ox- ford-university-press-study/. consent for AI use of academic and news content. Web- site: https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-demands-prior- consent-for-ai-use-of-academic-and-news-content/ C. Burrows, W. C. W. Chan, C. Chen, et al. 2023. Best practices for using AI when writing scientific manu- scripts: ACS Nanao 17: 4091-4093. publishing your work. Plant Science Bulletin 64: 96-111. arly Kitchen Website: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet. org/2023/01/13/did-chatgpt-just-lie-to-me/ publishing: A view from three experts. The Schol- arly Kitchen Website: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet. org/2023/01/18/guest-post-ai-and-scholarly-publish- ing-a-view-from-three-experts/ deals with AI companies. Some professors are out- raged. The Chronicle of Higher Education Website: https://www.chronicle.com/article/two-major-academ- ic-publishers-signed-deals-with-ai-companies-some- professors-are-outraged?sra=true Motoki, F., V. Pinho Heto, and V. Rodrigues. 2023. More human than human: Measuring ChatGPT politi- cal bias. Public Choice 198: 3-23. ly biased. Scientific American Website: https://www. scientificamerican.com/article/even-chatgpt-says- chatgpt-is-racially-biased/ signed to detect AI-generated writing: A comparison of 16 AI text detectors. Open Information Science 7: 20220158. and N. Peng. 2023. “Kelly is a warm person, Joseph is a role model”: Gender biases in LLM-generated refer- ence letters. Website: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.09219 labels: Building modular machine learning networks for rapid herbarium specimen analysis with LeafMa- chine2. Applications in Plant Sciences 11: e11548. Smith. 2023. Herbarium specimen label transcription reimagined with large language models: Capabilities, productivity, and risks. American Journal of Botany 110: e16256. confirm AI partnerships as Cambridge University Pres offers ‘opt-in’. The Bookseller Website: https://www. thebookseller.com/news/wiley-cambridge-university- press-and-oxford-university-press-confirm-ai-partner- ships happening and what’s to come in generative AI. The Scholarly Kitchen Website: https://scholarlykitchen. PSB 70 (3) 2024 215 International Journal of Plant Sciences IJPS is seeking contributions for a series of occasional papers, Primers in the Plant Sciences. “Primers” are short, peer-reviewed, accessible introductions to well-defined topics in the plant sciences. Each Primer is both an introduction to a topic in plant science and a narrow-in-scope review that serves as a useful first-stop reference to scientists at all career stages. Primers are intended to provide the reader with a foundation in the topic and introduce them to leading research questions and methodologies in the field. Call for Proposals: Primers in the Plant Sciences For more information, visit journals.uchicago.edu/journals/ijps/primers 216 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years As I started to near the end of my tenure as Editor- in-Chief of Plant Science Bulletin, I thought a lot about what I wanted my last issue to include. One of my favorite parts of being editor has been exploring the archives and reading the words of contributors over the past 70 years. A prevalent theme that has run through the PSB since the beginning has been botanical education. In fact, the very first article, printed on page one of the January 1955 issue, is an essay by the chair of the Education Committee, Sydney S. Greenfield. In his essay, Greenfield declares that Plant Science Bulletin will serve as a platform for discussions about education in plant science. “The Committee on Education of The Botanical Society of America has been studying means whereby it might effectively promote greater appreciation and proper development of plant science in the colleges, SPECIAL SECTION Honoring the Tradition of Botany Education in the Plant Science Bulletin: A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES BY CHARLES E. BESSEY TEACHING AWARD WINNERS as well as the education of the general public as to the importance of plants and their study to man. It will require nationwide discussion among botanists of educational and other problems. with a view towards development and formulation of professional policies, and plans for coordinated constructive action. Until now, a major obstacle to cooperative analysis and attempts to solve our common problems has been the lack of an appropriate medium for intra-professional discussions, and in this regard, the establishment of Plant Science Bulletin may well presage a new era for professional botany in this country.” (Greenfield, 1955) The early editions of Plant Science Bulletin are particularly rife with essays examining teaching philosophies and practices and setting out strategies for connecting with students, administrators, and the general public. I have found many of these articles, such as those by Palmquist (1956), Fuller (1957), and Stern (1971) to be especially impactful and I keep Palmquist’s Ten Commandments for the Teaching Botanist posted on my office door. The need for dialogue on educational themes, of course, endures and PSB contributors have continued to both debate educational ideals and share practical classroom activities (e.g., Wandersee and Schussler, 2001; Carter, 2004; Keller and Bordelon, 2022). I have used a variation of the Market Botany lab in my own botany course many times (Martine, 2011), By Mackenzie Taylor Editor-in-Chief, Plant Science Bulletin PSB 70 (3) 2024 217 and I am thrilled to have been able to feature many education-focused articles during my time as editor (e.g., Doust, 2016; Sundberg, 2016; Goodwillie and Jolls, 2018; Montgomery and Farrah, 2021; Parsley, 2021; and many others). In my last issue of Plant Science Bulletin, I wanted to showcase and further this long tradition. could also provide a platform for some of our Charles E. Bessey Teaching Award winners. Fortuitously, many of these winners were already preparing talks for the symposium “Bessey’s Legacy: Enthusiasm and Innovation in Botanical Instruction,” moderated by Ben Montgomery and Rachel Jabaily at Botany 2024, and were willing to adapt these presentations into print essays. I reached out to other past winners, as well, and almost everyone graciously accepted my invitation. about an issue of their choice having to do with teaching in botany. I suggested that articles could be a reflection on personal teaching philosophy, observations on the state of botany education, or a call to action for change. I’m pleased to say that the articles in this collection cover all of this and more. I found these articles to be inspiring and thought provoking and to provide a snapshot of the challenges and rewards of teaching botany in first quarter or so of the 21 st century. I firmly believe that Charles Bessey, as well as Sydney Greenfield, Edward Palmquist, and the other botany educators who have graced the pages of Plant Science Bulletin, would be thrilled to see that the members of the Botanical Society of America continue a strong a tradition of thoughtful and reflective teaching. REFERENCES Carter, J. L. 2004. Developing a Curriculum for the Teach- ing of Botany. Plant Science Bulletin 50(2): 42-47. https:// botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ PSB_2004_50_2.pdf ence Teaching and Science Experience for Pre- and In- service High School Science Teachers. Plant Science Bulletin 62(1): 25-29. https://botany.org/userdata/Is- sueArchive/issues/originalfile/PSB_2016_62_1.pdf Fuller, H. J. 1957. The Role of Botany in a Liberal Education. Plant Science Bulletin 3(1): 4-6. https:// botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ PSB_1957_3_1.pdf 1-4. https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/orig- inalfile/PSB_1955_1_1.pdf Blindness and Plant Invasion Through Service-Learning. Plant Science Bulletin 64(1): 11-17. https://issuu.com/bo- tanicalsocietyofamerica/docs/psb_64__1__2018 Microscopic World of Live Tree Bark: A Model Instruc- tional Experience for Students and Teachers Using A Virtual iAdventure, Teacher Preparation Guide, Student Worksheets, and Moist Chamber Cultures. Plant Science Bulletin 68(1): 12-23. https://botany.org/userdata/Is- sueArchive/issues/originalfile/WebPSB68_1_2022_3.pdf Lab Module. Plant Science Bulletin 57(2): 61-66. https:// botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/originalfile/ PSB_2011_57_2.pdf Distance Botany Laboratory with Online, Outdoors, and Hands-On Exercises. Plant Science Bulletin 67(1): 16-28. https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/original- file/PSB67_1_2021.pdf Undergraduates in Botany. Plant Science Bulletin 2(4): 5-8. https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/issues/orig- inalfile/PSB_1956_2_4.pdf to the Past to Inform the Future. Plant Science Bulletin 67(2): 94-99. https://botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/is- sues/originalfile/PSB_2021_67_2.pdf Provide Trained Botanists for Undergraduate Education. Plant Science Bulletin 17(1): 2-3. https://botany.org/ps- barchive/issue/1971-v17-no-1.html ed States. Part IV. The Role of the Botanical Society of America (BSA) into the Next Millenium. Plant Science Bulletin 62(3): 132-154. https://botany.org/userdata/Is- sueArchive/issues/originalfile/PSB_2016_62_3.pdf Theory of Plant Blindness. Plant Science Bulletin 47(1): 2-9. https://www.botany.org/userdata/IssueArchive/is- 218 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years Four Things I Learned from 30 Years of Teaching (That You Probably Already Know) By Cynthia S. Jones Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, U 3043, University of Connecticut, Storrs CT 06250 USA The Botanical Society of America is replete with excellent teachers. Why? Because botanists have to be good teachers! The inherent bias against plants in the United States virtually ensures that most students, at least until very recently, take their first plant class in college because it satisfies a requirement. A good teacher erodes plant bias, ideally recruiting more than a few students to the “plant side.” What we do as college teachers is incredibly important to ensuring the future of our academic discipline, and there is no better evidence than the BSA Membership Matters survey (Figure 1) from June 2022. The majority responding discovered their passion for botany as undergraduates. I know I did. When I first started teaching at UConn, I developed two upper division courses. One was Plant Anatomy, which was already “on the books,” and the second was a course I called “Plant Developmental Morphology” based on the principles Don Kaplan taught at Berkeley (Kaplan, 2022). My approach to teaching was exactly what I had experienced as an undergrad and graduate student: a lecture/lab format where I gave the lecture, and a graduate student teaching assistant taught the lab. Lectures involved chalkboards and switching between projecting Kodachrome images and an overhead projector. Lecture exams were structured in a short-answer format, primarily based on comparisons, descriptions, and definitions. Lab exams were based on moving from station to station every two minutes or so, largely focused on recognition of features. I was not an early devotee of PowerPoint lectures, but three features eventually swayed me: I wouldn’t have to spend an hour before each lecture pulling Figure 1. Survey responses to the question “At what point did you choose botany as a focus of your career or inter- est?” June 2022, BSA newsletter, Membership Matters. PSB 70 (3) 2024 219 and organizing slides, I could incorporate new images much more easily, and finally, I would save myself the hassle of switching between overheads and Kodachrome slides. Initially, my PowerPoint slides consisted of only images and graphs, but I soon discovered that using the chalkboard for the rest was awkward because when the projection screen was down, it covered the center of the chalk board. It wasn’t long before I began to put the words and drawings I would have written on the board into the PowerPoint lectures. Grabbing images directly from the internet also meant I could quickly incorporate new material without finding the original books and papers to photocopy for overheads. A win-win for me! Within t wo years, my evaluation scores declined, students seemed to sleep more in class, and they left the lab earlier and earlier. My realization that I was no longer providing students with a course that most of them valued led to some soul searching. For me it was a question of self-respect—if I was going be in the classroom (which was part of my job, after all), then I wanted to do what I could to make it go as well as possible. I’m not a funny person by nature, so I knew better than to try to motivate an audience with humor; nor am/was I brilliant enough to captivate students just by talking without much prep. My approach was to present a course focused on content that was as clear as I could make it and by building a story line that flowed so one bit of information led to another. For me, plant development was the obvious thread, so both of my courses began with embryos and the plant body grew from there. All this soul searching resulted in two insights: (1) I’m introverted enough that although I loved teaching, I never really “enjoyed” giving lectures—I learned to do it well eventually—but what I loved were the students’ “ah ha” moments in the lab, and (2) I was drawn to teaching because of the plants. I had to figure out how to let the plants lead. I decided to try to restructure my courses around Don Kaplan’s mantra “Ask the Organism .” 1. Ask the organism In 2017, my then PhD student Dr. Kerri Mocko, who had been my TA for several semesters, graduated. Before she left for her post-doc, I was able to pay her as an adjunct for one semester and together, we overhauled Plant Anatomy into what we called Plant Structural Diversity. 1. First, we created a “studio” time slot. We changed the schedule from one three- hour lab to two two-hour labs per week, with the lab scheduled to directly follow the “lecture,” resulting in two three-hour time blocks. 2. We emphasized at the beginning of class that we were teaching a “skills” course, not a course that required memoriza- tion, but at the same time stressing the importance of the vocabulary. We told students the first day that by the end of the course, we expected them to be researchers, in that they should be able to make a hand-section of any vegeta- tive organ on most plants and explain to someone else its internal structure and function of cells. Exams would be based on interpreting material they had never seen before, or interpreting something they had seen during the course, but from a different perspective. 3. We revised every lecture (“content de- livery”) so that it emphasized structure, function, and evolution together (e.g., a simplified phylogenetic approach to wood structure was followed immedi- ately by ecological wood anatomy). 4. We reorganized the lab manual so that rather than being written in paragraph form (because students didn’t seem to read carefully enough to figure out what they should see), the text was largely structured in bullet points with open boxes where they should draw specific features. Consequently, the important parts of what they should take away from each unit were abundantly clear. 5. We carefully matched the lecture and lab material in short time units, so that one of us would present content (lecture) for 10–25 minutes (at most, with a few ex- ceptions), and then students would turn to the “active engagement” exercises (i.e., PSB 70 (3) 2024 220 the lab material). When they finished looking at the material (we always asked if it was okay to move on, or we had them put bright sticky notes on their mi- croscopes to indicate they were finished), we moved into the next content delivery section. This approach had numerous advantages: a. Switching between listening and active engagement keeps students awake! b. We could stop talking anytime so students could make hand sections and see for themselves what we had just been talking about. This immedi- ate reinforcement with living material turned out to be a powerful teaching tool. c. In previous years, we put all the plant material at the back of the room and had students pick up what they needed once lab began. Now, we put as much of the live material on their tables at the beginning of class as pos- sible, so when they sat down, it was right in front of them. This had two advantages: (1) some students started looking at the material when they sat down, rather than their phones and (2) we could begin the unit with a question about the material in front of them; in other words, as much as possible we asked them to “Ask the Organism.” d. Students didn’t finish units at the same rate. We encouraged anyone who was done to move around, go outside for a few minutes, etc. What happened most often was that stu- dents would help each other or just start chatting. At first, I was a little dismayed that they were talking about anything but what they were looking at, but I soon realized that if we didn’t interfere, the conversation slid easily between a show they’d just watched to “Is this the secondary cell wall?” and then back to the show. We tried to keep the chatter at low volume and as far as I know, no other students com- plained that they couldn’t concentrate. Encouraging the movement, breaks, and the social aspect helped boost the general enthusiasm and energy level during the long afternoons. 6. Lecture and lab exams were not separate. Instead, on the day of the exam, students would arrive to find a few plants (or slides) at their desk that they may or may not have seen before. If a living plant was represented, they would be responsible for making hand sections. The exam would consist of four or five questions that would require illustration, interpre- tation, and the rationale for their inter- pretation; most students stayed the full three hours to complete the midterms. From semester to semester, we tried letting students bring in references, i.e. their notes. They were not allowed to use the internet, though. As far as I can tell, allowing notes didn’t really affect their grades much, but it did seem to reduce the stress associated with taking exams. Another thing I’ve done since before we restructured the course is that I would grade the first exam, and then give everyone in the class the chance to redo it as a take-home, re-grade the take-home exam, and then record the average of their scores. I emphasized to them that my concern was for their learning, not their grades. In over 30 years of teaching, I had only one student complain to me that this approach wasn’t “fair” to the good students. I pointed out that I don’t grade on a curve, so the “mean” (and the comparison it implies) was not relevant. (I wanted students to know how they are doing as we went through the course, and not count on a mystical curve at the end to save them.) Students who scored well the first time didn’t need to spend the extra time redoing the exam. I also pointed out that I generally only do this for the first exam. From my perspective, it helped the students who didn’t do well on the first exam maintain some degree of interest in the course, without feeling like there was no “hope” of eventually getting a good grade. This perspective is completely selfish on my part, because who wants to spend the semester trying to teach students who don’t want to be there because they have no hope of attaining their goals? PSB 70 (3) 2024 221 Student reaction to the integrated lecture/lab format was strongly positive, so the following year, I reorganized Developmental Plant Morphology to follow the same format. Since that time, a few other colleagues in my department have restructured their lecture/lab classes in a similar format as well. Does it take more time? Probably. I arranged the rest of my schedule so that as much as possible, I devoted two full days a week to teaching, but very little time the rest of the week. And since I was in the classroom during the lab, I no longer needed to spend a few hours each week on TA meetings. The TA and I set up the lab together and I explained what I wanted students to see during that process. In order for the TA to gain more experience being in control of the classroom, I offered the TA the opportunity to be the lead instructor, i.e., providing the content and leading the engagement periods, on as many units as they wished. Most TAs were happy to lead one or two days out of the semester but didn’t really want to take the lead more than that. Was the extra time worth it? For me personally, absolutely! This format seemed to make it easier to spark a deeper interest in the material. I felt like I got to know my students better, which helped me better understand their questions and responses to the material, and I ended up with additional insight into what aspects of the course worked well. in visually oriented courses (comparative anatomy, morphology, etc.) is drawing, but at some point, I began to worry that students would prefer to work in a digital format, i.e., that my approach was old fashioned and didn’t involve the “latest technology.” More and more students were using their phone to take pictures through the ocular of the microscope. While I’ve seen some amazing photos taken this way, getting the focus right requires very steady hands and careful positioning. To try to make this easier, in 2015, I received a teaching grant from my university to purchase a large screen (since technology in the old building I taught in was rudimentary) and ten iPad minis (i.e., one for each pair of students). I worked with the UConn’s Technical Services department to design adapters that would position the iPad minis in place over one ocular for accurate focus. Now, for the first time, individual students could share though Airplay what they were seeing on their scope to the large monitor so that everyone could see it. I also posted PDFs of each lab write-up so students could populate the lab write-up with digital photos that could be labeled in OneNote. Surprisingly, almost all students preferred to draw on the lab handouts. For one thing, the iPad adapter ended up being slightly cumbersome to set up and remove, and since it blocked one ocular, students preferred not to keep it mounted on the scope. More importantly, students also told me that especially since the pandemic and flipped classrooms, almost all of their education was digital. They spent hours upon hours each day in front of screens, so it was actually a relief to come look at something and try to draw it. 3. Students want to do well, but life gets in the way The first decade of my career I was always on the watch for people cheating, wary of those trying to take advantage of the system, and of me. I was skeptical of excuses. I became much more sympathetic, and I think a better teacher, when my step-kids became university students. I finally began to understand the student experience from the student perspective. If students missed assignments or didn’t perform well on a test, I could appreciate that they had other things going on in their lives besides my course. Almost all were pursuing minors, double majors, and multiple club or organizational activities, in large part responding to stress of building their resumes. After I switched to the integrated lecture/ lab structure, I also learned just how many of my students went from my class directly to a job. PSB 70 (3) 2024 222 Many people have suggested that course evaluations from students don’t reflect student learning. Perhaps… but evaluations often reflect how students feel about a course. Students might not remember the details of what we tried to teach, but they will remember how they felt about a class and by extension, the subject matter. More than anything else, my goal as an educator was to leave students with an appreciation (dare I say love?) for plants and how they grow, to teach through awe and discovery as much as possible, and to respect them as people. Are there things I wish I’d done differently? Absolutely. In hindsight, I wish I had incorporated more inquiry-based techniques than I did. Even so, nearly all students reported on evaluations that they learned more, or much more, than in their other classes. One thing that worked well was to conduct scavenger hunts inside our UConn Botanical Conservatory (aka, The EEB Greenhouses). Scavenger hunts proved to be effective teaching tools because students had to use their skills to rule out possible candidates, as much as to investigate those that exhibited a feature of interest. I recognize that an incredible collection of plants in greenhouses adjacent to our teaching lab building has been an incredible privilege. It also has been one of the greatest joys of my career. 4. Spend more time outside Despite our amazing indoor plant collection, I regret that I didn’t have students spend more time outside in both plant structural diversity and developmental plant morphology. Over the last two decades, many studies have shown that outdoor classrooms and educational activities are incredibly effective for increasing concentration, creativity, and retention in children (e.g., Coyle, 2010; Kuo et al., 2017). The benefits of outdoor classrooms at the college level are understudied (Birdwell, 2024), but based on feedback from students, the few units of my courses that did require spending time outside (e.g., tree architecture) were always the most popular. Some of the scavenger hunts in the greenhouse could be converted to outdoor activities, weather permitting, if I had made the effort. I wish I had. traditional courses like plant anatomy in such a way that students not only come to appreciate plants, but also develop an understanding, even if subconscious, of a plant’s place in the world, while at the same time deepening their own con- nections to the natural world. Would it take some effort to revise my courses again to do so? Abso- lutely. But at a time when over 80% of Americans live in urban environments, it feels imperative to give it a try. Hopefully, future generations of botanical educators have already, or will tumble to this realization sooner than I did. REFERENCES Birdwell, T., M. Basdogan, and T. Harris. 2024. Devel- oping outdoor campus space for teaching and learning: a scoping review of the literature. Learning Environ- ments Research DOI: 10.1007/s10984-024-09504-1. outdoor education and outdoor school time create high performance students. A report from the National Wildlife Federation. Website: https://www.nwf.org/Ed- ucational-Resources/Reports/2010/09-01-2010-Back- to-School-Back-Outside phology. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL. lessons in nature boost subsequent classroom engage- ment? Refueling students in flight. Frontiers in Psychol- ogy 8: 2253. 223 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years By J. Phil Gibson Professor, School of Biological Sciences University of Oklahoma My colleague Dr. Drew Hasley recently began a seminar presentation with what appeared to be a blank, white screen, and he asked the audience to read what it said. Although we were unable to read the text on the slide, the software on Drew’s computer—something he uses daily to do all the things we think of as the “typical work” of a scientist—was able to detect and read the title of his talk. The title was written in a white font on a white background, and Drew, who is blind, explained that font color and background are irrelevant to screen readers. He then said, “People are not disabled. It’s environments that are disabling.” Following this incredibly powerful combination of demonstration and statement, he proceeded to describe what can and must be done to improve accessibility to STEM education in our classrooms, lecture halls, and laboratories. undoubtedly arises for many of us when we consider accessibility for our science classes is: “How can I adjust my teaching spaces and practices to be more inviting and provide opportunities for all students to learn?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. Some solutions may be relatively simple, such as giving extended time on assignments. Others may be more challenging to discern and implement, such as making a laboratory activity compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Regardless of the complexity of the problem, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can be an effective starting point to help teachers identify strategies and solutions to support learning for all students and help them achieve their goals as a scientist regardless of a student’s visible or hidden disabilities. Universal Design for Learning Botany UDL is based on the architectural principle of Universal Design, in which constructed environments intentionally contain design features to improve accessibility or use for one group of people that absolutely needs that specific design element and can also provide emergent benefits to others. The classic example is a feature we regularly see on sidewalks called “curb cuts.” These small ramps are commonly found in curbs and at intersections. They are essential, and required by law, to help individuals with mobility issues use wheelchairs or walkers to safely navigate sidewalks. However, they also benefit people pulling luggage, pushing a cart, or many other activities where the curb is anything ranging from a nuisance to a literal barrier. Automatic doors provide a similar benefit. Some people need them, while others benefit from their availability. UDL is based on the same idea. By designing and providing educational experiences that intentionally include features essential for some students to use them, we can also provide both anticipated and unanticipated learning benefits to everyone in the classroom. PSB 70 (3) 2024 224 UDL originated with the educational non-profit group CAST. Their mission for over 40 years has been to promote learning spaces and experiences that “are intentionally designed to elevate strengths and eliminate barriers so everyone has the opportunity to grow and thrive” (CAST.org). Their approach prompts educators to recognize that there is no “typical” student and that the real “normal” situation in any classroom is a range of differences among our students in how they learn and express what they have learned. UDL breaks these differences into three categories: Engagement, Representation, and Action/Expression. CAST researchers have shown that these areas are fundamental to how learners interact with lessons, perceive and take in information, and demonstrate their understanding, respectively. For each of these categories, there are three elements: Accessing (how students can obtain and use information and resources), Building (how students construct knowledge, skills, and understanding), and Internalizing (how students reflect upon, apply, and retain learning). CAST combines the three categories and their three elements into the UDL guideline matrix (https://udlguidelines.cast. org) to give educators suggestions for modifying lessons and removing unnecessary barriers to make learning opportunities available and meaningful to all students. your class, but you have a student who is hearing- impaired. The challenge in this situation lies at the intersection of Representation and Access in the UDL guidelines matrix. A suggested solution is to provide an alternative means of representing what the speaker is saying, such as providing a real- time transcript or an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter. While these items are essential for our hypothetical student, the transcript could also benefit students seated in the back or in a noisy part of the room, or perhaps someone who missed the lecture. The interpreter could potentially even benefit students studying or who know ASL. Likewise, the experience could increase awareness and stimulate interest to learn ASL. Providing collections of slides before class is another example. Some students may have an accommodation that requires providing lecture slides to them beforehand, but providing them to all students can benefit others as well. The reasons of how or why they could benefit other students is irrelevant. Unless there is a specific reason that sharing them would somehow hinder learning, why not give everyone the benefit of having the resource? For example, my classes frequently involve constructing and interpreting phylogenies. For a blind or low-vision student, learning these things is an immense challenge. Through my collaboration with Drew Hasley, Kristin Jenkins, and Hayley Orndorf, we modified an existing tree- thinking resource called the Great Clade Race (1) that uses symbols printed on cards and is therefore dependent on vision to teach tree thinking by converting it into one that uses tokens, making it a Tactile Clade Race (2). The tokens are accessible both visually and tactilely, so just like a previous example, different forms of representing the information increased accessibility by removing the barrier of vision-only access. All other elements of the activity remained the same, and assessments demonstrated its effectiveness at teaching the concepts and skills (2). However, we also noticed that in the tactile version, students worked as teams and completed the activity faster than for the visual form. This revealed several unintended and unanticipated benefits of our modification. And therein lies the true value of UDL: it stimulates changes that are essential for some but beneficial to all. curriculum structure one can follow to make lessons and resources accessible. Rather, UDL is a set of guidelines and suggestions for considering and identifying items to change. It should be thought of as an approach or perspective rather than a checklist to solve problems. Through PSB 70 (3) 2024 225 thoughtful consideration of course goals and learning objectives, UDL can help frame issues and identify solutions. For example, essay questions are common components of exams and other assessments to evaluate learning. However, consider whether an essay is the only way a student can express understanding. When grading an essay, ask yourself if you are also using their writing and grammar skills as indicators of understanding the topic in the question. Those are two different skill sets. If writing is part of the assignment, learning goals, and rubric, there is nothing wrong with evaluating writing itself—but what if your goal is to determine if the student understands a botanical concept such as the structure of a flower? Would a diagram be an acceptable way to demonstrate learning as well? What if they are not a particularly strong wordsmith, but they are excellent at producing diagrams? We have all told students at one time or another that we are not grading their artistic skills when we ask them to produce labeled diagrams in assessments. But how often do we extend that same leeway to questions when, for no specific pedagogical reason, we ask for or expect written answers by default or because that’s an easier question to write? Providing multiple, appropriate means of expression to show understanding is a solution at the core of UDL. If you are hesitant about that suggestion, consider this. In a recent workshop, a UDL expert demonstrated how a UDL perspective can help us better promote and evaluate learning. Here is a botanical modification of their activity to demonstrate this point. Get a pen and paper and draw a flower. First use your dominant hand. Do the same using your non-dominant hand. Now hold the pen or pencil in the crook of your arm or with your foot to draw a flower. Now suppose I am evaluating your knowledge of botany based on whether you drew the parts correctly and how well you drew a flower with your foot. Although some of you may draw quite well with your foot, that would hardly be a fair assessment of knowledge, right? I may have a perfectly valid reason for trying to find someone who can best draw a flower with their foot. But if what I want to determine is whether you know the parts of a flower and how they are put together, why would I try to base my evaluation of knowledge on the quality of the drawing? We make a similar mistake when we expect students to demonstrate thoughts and knowledge in a restricted way that may not allow them to be at their best to express them. When we use writing skills to evaluate knowledge of something else, we are making the same error as in my flower-drawing example. UDL provides ways to prevent that from happening. I am not advocating that we let students decide which assignments they will do or the form they will take for all assignments, although that is an intriguing idea. What I am asking you to consider is whether there are other ways, or more available options, that would allow students to do their best work. are asking about UDL: “Why do this before I need to do it?” Of course, we would all provide any accommodations for students upon being informed by the appropriate campus office, and so one could wait until the need arises to do any of this. To that point, I ask that you consider the differences between accommodation and accessibility, and the consequences of their differences on teaching and student experiences. Both share the important goal of increasing inclusion of all learners in the classroom or laboratory. However, accommodation typically involves reacting to specific needs once made aware of them—usually just before the start of a semester only a few days away—and then modifying lessons, activities, or assessments so they can be used by a particular learner. This often results in frantic, last-minute changes at a time when there is little free time available. In contrast, thinking about how one can improve accessibility via UDL takes a proactive approach by carefully considering, designing, or modifying lessons and activities from their inception or as part of regular curricular updates to include features that are essential to support learners that have specific needs and can potentially benefit everyone. PSB 70 (3) 2024 226 This approach to solving problems beforehand usually results in more thoughtful solutions that are aligned with learning goals rather than last-minute modifications that just need to be “good enough” to work. A proactive accessibility stance is better than a reactive accommodation stance for several reasons. It increases inclusivity by ensuring that learning environments and experiences allow everyone, regardless of ability, to participate fully. It is more efficient simply because including accessibility features upfront saves the instructor time as compared to adjusting later. Anticipating learning challenges and student needs is also empowering for individual students because it gives them the freedom to navigate their learning and opportunities to do so without asking for special accommodations. Last, and possibly most importantly, using a UDL stance to increase accessibility benefits for everyone in the classroom or lab creates a positive learning and working environment because it promotes a culture of inclusion and respect for all students and their needs. But if we judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” We should think about that before we step into our classrooms. We often teach and assess in ways that are comfortable to us, ways we have experienced, ways we would show our understanding, or ways that we haven’t really dissected pedagogically. It’s easy to think that if it worked for us, it must be good—or at least it will work for the average student. As I mentioned earlier, the average student is a mythical creature. Our students are a rich tapestry of diverse needs, experiences, goals, abilities, and motivations. We must remember that what we do in the classroom or laboratory is about providing students experiences and opportunities to learn, gain skills, develop skills, and do their best. I am not asking anyone to immediately make wholesale changes in their teaching. I am asking that we all at least examine our classes through a UDL lens, and identify one thing or one aspect of a course or a lesson that can be improved by UDL modifications. Doing that one little thing can have a huge, positive impact. As botanists, we are quite familiar with that idea. Just remember that doing one little thing to increase accessibility is just like planting a seed. And we all know how the one small action of planting a seed, like knowledge, can have huge consequences once it starts to grow. REFERENCES Goldsmith, D. W. 2003. The Great Clade Race: Pre- senting Cladistic Thinking to Biology Majors & Gen- eral Science Students. The American Biology Teacher 65: 679–682. son. 2024. Tactile Trees: Demystifying Phylogenies for Everyone with Universal Design for Learning. The American Biology Teacher 86: 281–288. 227 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years By Christopher T. Martine Department of Biology, Bucknell University A few days ago, I had a visit with my Field Botany class to the campus farm on the southeastern edge of Bucknell University, where I have been employed as a professor since 2012. The visit to the farm, where we met crop plants and discussed their taxonomic connections to the wild species we have thus far learned, capped off a big week for our group. For the previous class we left campus at 7:30 a.m. for a 4-hour trip to the Mohn Mill Natural Area, a designated Wild Plant Sanctuary in Bald Eagle State Forest. The site, just off Pennsylvania’s Mid State Trail, is dotted with large circular vernal pools populated with enough “Osmunda” ferns to make one feel as though you have stepped back into the Jurassic. But the highlight of this annual excursion is always the moment when I tell the students, as they are lined up across a narrow wooden bridge on the Mid State looking down into the forest, that—only 5 weeks into the course—they would be hard-pressed to find a tree, shrub, forb, or fern that they don’t recognize and know the Latin name for (Figure 1). something like 75 species by that point, so their handle on this particular woodland was a function of similar plant communities we’ve visited and the plants we’ve seen in them (and, of course, the work the students have put in to memorize Latin names and recognize species when they come into view). Still, even with caveats, staring into nature and realizing you are seeing it in an entirely different way than a month ago is a powerful and deservedly pride-inducing moment. Field-Based Courses Still Matter, but not Like They Used To So who are these students? Almost all of them, like many of the students I have taught in 19 years of professing at Bucknell and SUNY Plattsburgh, are Biology majors taking my class to fulfill an upper-level requirement in ecology/evolution. Many of them are headed for careers in health and medicine; a number of them will be MDs. Content- wise, Field Botany is a one-off for the majority of my enrollees. And, if I am being honest, this is one of the best things about teaching the class: it is a one-semester opportunity to initiate a life- changing shift in perspective. Rutgers University in the fall of 1993, this is exactly the shift that happened for me. I added a few more undergrad course-based field experiences, thereafter, including two 5-week summer field courses in Newfoundland and in Alaska. But, for me, the die had been cast the moment I aced my first tree/shrub identification quiz. I knew that I would someday seek out opportunities to teach in similar ways, with the hope and intent to connect students to nature by teaching about real things in real places. course; later, as a Master’s student, I taught the whole class as a sabbatical replacement. Working PSB 70 (3) 2024 228 for two government agencies I managed K-12 outdoor education programs and then, privately, co-ran a few years of K-4 summer outdoor camps with my wife, Rachel. And when I got my first tenure-track job at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2006, I immediately added Field Botany to the Biology curriculum. At that point in time, the students I was teaching had had childhoods a lot like mine. Students who were 21 or 22 years old in 2006 were born in the mid-1980s; they had dealt with idle time free of constant smart phone access. They were inherently aware of their surroundings much of the time. developed a new version of Field Botany, I could already tell things were changing. So could a lot of people, as perhaps best evidenced by the publication and popularity of Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods in 2013—and the suddenly widespread use of the phrase “nature deficit disorder.” since then. Students who are 21 or 22 years old in 2024 were born around 2003. Everything about their childhoods was different from mine. Smart phones, tablets, laptops, constant connection… and constant reasons for not being outside, or taking long hikes, or camping or fishing or looking up at the night sky. These students grew up over- scheduled, over-managed, and overly focused on extracurriculars and youth sports. Many spent years of their lives outside—but on athletic fields, not in the woods or down in the creek. Their connection to nature has been mediated by screens or experienced through enough filters to make nature itself feel like artifice. The distance between students and a comfortably broad understanding of the biodiversity around them persists even after heading off to university. majors are often now plugged into courses with integrative approaches that have become the way we introduce biology at many institutions, with current students not experiencing (for better or worse) the same semi-exhaustive march through general biology content that previous generations faced. Case in point: Bucknell’s new four-course introductory core sequence. Lauded on campus for an approach focused on student retention, skills-building, and accessibility, our content- based courses consist of case studies that vertically integrate subdisciplinary content. What was once a 4-week unit on plant diversity and evolution is now a 4-week module on “Milkweeds and Monarchs” touching on topics including ecological niches, interspecific competition, plant response to herbivory, transport across membranes, neuron structure and function, impact of mutations, and predator adaptation. It’s all pretty great and students gain a lot with this approach, learning to understand the multi-dimensionality of biological problems. But one trade-off is that they also receive less traditional content, including a deep primer on general botanical concepts. When these students arrive as juniors or seniors in my Field Botany class, they typically know little about the life of plants unless they have learned it outside of their formal education. cries the old-guy botanist. Figure 1. Students enrolled in the 2024 edition of Field Botany at Bucknell University on Pennsylvania’s Mid State Trail, one of 20 locations the class will visit this se- mester. PSB 70 (3) 2024 229 I am (in this moment) not being that guy, however. Because as much as the above items do present a challenge, they also present an important opportunity. Area, where my class spent time hanging around a sphagnum-dominated mountain “boglet” discussing glacial cycles and rates of decomposition. A student later reflected that they had heard about bogs in other classes, and even learned the story of “Tollund Man” (the ancient preserved body recovered from a bog in Denmark), but they never imagined that they might live anywhere near a similar sort of place— let alone one they would someday visit IRL. To be standing in an actual “bog,” feeling the give of the peat, allowing the water to infiltrate your old pair of sneakers and soak into your socks… to be introduced to plants that grow nowhere else but in these particular habitats and to understand why… this completes the picture. This is the stuff you now never forget. context to so much of what our students have already learned and may learn later on; it is integrative biology on steroids. first real opportunities for students to experience nature in meaningful ways. As a baseline, even before the content delivery and the graded assessments, this is already enough to change the way a person feels in the world and to spark an appreciation for the life around them. This is why field-based courses still matter, but not like they used to. These days, they might just matter more than they ever have. 230 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years A key feature in connecting students to nature and the botanical world is to get them to “see” the diversity of botanical textures in the green world around them. Neo-natural history, where we take a closer look at each plant, adds new dimensions and wonder at the way we look at plants. It trains the eye to recognize the importance of plant diversity in scientific discovery and to understand the critical role of plant diversity on our quality of life. If we are to make progress in addressing the two main environmental crises of climate change and biodiversity loss (Figure 1; Pörtner et al., 2023), an appreciation and understanding of the multiple ways plants provide solutions is critical. Plants are key in solving these dual environmental crises (Griscom et al., 2017; Pörtner et al., 2023; Zielinski et al., 2023). There is no more important time than now for us to teach plant diversity both to make new discoveries and to find creative solutions to environmental problems. field and lab provides an indelible experience that trains the eye to see, leads to new discoveries, provides examples of the power of the comparative approach, and gets students to recognize the critical role of biodiversity in our environment. With over 400,000 plant species globally (Enquist et al., 2019), we as botanists are blessed with having an almost limitless number of species to explore and to fuel new discoveries. Almost every plant has something unique or special. From the seemingly simple morphology of bryophytes to the extraordinary diversity of the most complex flowers, fascination dominates. Here I highlight Neo-Natural History: Careful Observation and Co-Discovery in Teaching Botany By Joan Edwards Williams College Figure 1. Plant diversity can provide solutions to the twin environmental crises of climate change and biodi- versity loss, which are coupled through human-caused dynamic interactions. Each of the three factors on the triangle (biodiversity, climate change, and society) im- pact each other (red arrows). Humans have the ability to improve our quality of life by mitigating the negative impacts (blue arrows) and in return, restoring, or gaining valuable services (green arrows). (Adapted from Pörtner et al., 2023.) PSB 70 (3) 2024 231 two approaches. The first is to look in depth at multiple features of a plant to highlight how they persist and their role in the environment. The second is to look at a plant over time to chart the evolution of plant behavior. I describe easy-to- access examples that may surprise, delight, and inform. a single plant creates a fuller picture of plant function and its role in the environment. An excellent example is close examination of Marchantia (Figure 2A), a relatively easy to access liverwort often growing at the base of buildings (even in February), but also found as a “volunteer” in greenhouses. look because they are relatives of the first land plants (Qiu et al., 1999) and had a profound impact on the environment. These early cryptospores were responsible for lowering the atmospheric levels of CO 2 and for triggering a mini–ice age during the Ordovician over 400 mya (Lenton et al., 2012). They are also responsible for the current levels of oxygen in our atmosphere (Lenton et al., 2016). There is almost a disconnect when students realize these small, seemingly inconspicuous plants had such a profound impact on our environment. If small liverworts can impact climate, what about the impact of eight billion people? morphology (Figure 1A), we see a dichotomously branching ground creeper that can never grow tall but can hopscotch across the landscape by harnessing the power of raindrops to jettison gemmae to new locations. The gemmae cups (Figure 2B) provide an example of evolutionary design where the urn shape provides a lower chamber in which new gemmae are produced and the top funnel shape serves as a launching site to Figure 2. (A) Top view of the dichotomously branching liverwort, Marchantia, with mature and developing gemmae cups extending from the surface. Individual cells, each with a central pore (white dots) are clearly visible. (B) Longi- tudinal section of a gemmae cup shows a lower chamber that produces gemmae and a funnel-shaped upper chamber that captures the energy of a falling raindrop and jettisons the gemmae. (C) Still frames from a video of a water drop hitting a gemmae cup and transporting gemmae-filled droplets (arrows). Filmed at 3000 fps with a 20- ms exposure. Parts B and C are from Edwards et al. (2019). PSB 70 (3) 2024 232 Figure 3. Alstroemeria flowers are protandrous, starting as male and switching to female. (A) All six anthers are still closed and the style is immature. (B, C) Male phase. Anthers mature in two groups. First, three anthers curl up and dehisce (B) and then later the remaining three anthers curl upwards and dehisce (C). (D) Female phase. The anthers have dropped down and the style has extended, curled upwards and split into three stigma lobes each with a pollination droplet. Stills are from a time-lapse video filmed in the lab over nine days. The tip of the style is indicated by arrows. capture the energy of a falling raindrop to splash and propel mature gemmae, which have risen to the surface. Marchantia thus provides a lesson in biomechanics and dispersal mechanisms for a non-vascular plant. movements in plant behavior and gain insight in terms of floral design, breeding systems, and maintenance of species in nature. Plants are unexpectedly agile in their movements that range from the explosive flowering in the bunchberry dogwood (Cornus canadensis), which opens in <0.5 ms (Edwards et al., 2005), to the more subtle movements of phototropisms and geotropisms. Here I highlight three examples of flowers that use movement to switch from one sex to another. The first example is Alstroemeria, a genus native to South America, but almost always available in florist section of local grocery stores. Alstroemeria flowers are protandrous, where anthers dehisce first; later, the style lengthens, curves upwards, and splits into three lobes, each topped with a pollination droplet (Figure 3). Using florists’ samples, students can observe these changes directly in real time. (Claytonia caroliniana), which is accessible in New England for field observation in the early spring. The flowers of Claytonia are also protandrous. In a field population, flowers are typically in different stages of development. On the first day of flowering, stamens are held erect and dehisce presenting magenta-colored pollen. On the second day, stamens reflex back and the style splits into three stigma lobes (Figure 4). Figure 4 . Claytonia caroliniana flowers are protandrous. On day one of flowering, the stamens are held upright and dehisce, presenting pollen. On day two, the stamens bend back toward the petals and the stigma splits into three lobes. By day three, most flowers begin to close. PSB 70 (3) 2024 233 Figure 5. Symplocarpus foetidus flowers are protan- drous. (A) Spadix with flowers all in female phase. (B) Spadix with flowers transitioning with the upper flowers in male phase and the lower flowers still in female phase. (C) Female phase flowers showing the stigmas and styles just protruding from the petals. (D) Male phase flowers with stamens, which have extended above the petals and dehisced presenting pollen. The final example is the flower of the iconic skunk cabbage (Arisaema triphyllum), which, if available, is well worth a field trip to observe the plants in situ. This allows one to experience first-hand the strong skunky odor, the wet swampy habitat, the extraordinary structure of the spathe and spadix, and the behavior of the flowers. Here in New England, skunk cabbage is our earliest blooming wildflower. It has protogynous flowers (Figure 5) but is also amazing in heating up to 35ºC above ambient air temperatures with a metabolism equivalent to that of a small mammal (Knutson, 1974), producing a skunk-like odor, and having specialized idioblast cells filled with double pointed raphide crystals. When broken, idioblasts shoot out these glass “spears” presumably as a protection against herbivory (see video in Pickett- Heaps and Pickett-Heaps, 1984). and in their natural setting can be foundational, can serve as a key part of teaching botany, and can contribute richly to learning and discovery in botany. Most students long remember visiting skunk cabbage in its native habitat, or a visit to a Sphagnum-dominated kettle-hole bog, or even observing the self-digesting flowers of Tradescantia, the unfolding and sexual switch of an Alstroemeria flower, or the sparkle on a Pelargonium petal. The list is endless. By providing a full context for plant behavior and enriching it with direct observation in both the field and the lab, we can give students an entree into new discoveries, train their eyes to “see,” and provide them the tools to interpret plants and their role no matter where they go. If we are to solve our twin environmental crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, a keen eye and a knowledge of the diversity of plants is key. REFERENCES Edwards, J., D. Whitaker, S. Klionsky, and M. J. Las- kowski. 2005. A record-breaking pollen catapult. Na- ture 435: 164. Edwards, J., M. Laskowski, T. I. Baskin, N. Mitchell, and B. DeMeo. 2019. The role of water in fast plant move- ments. Integrative and Comparative Biology 59: 1525- 1534. Enquist, B. J., X. Feng, B. Boyle, B. Maitner, E. A. New- man, P. M. Jørgensen, P. R. Roehrdanz, et al. 2019. The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Sciene Advances 5: eaaz0414. Griscom, B. W., J. Adams, P. W. Ellis, R. A. Houghton, G. Lomax, D. A. Miteva, W. H. Schlesinger, D. Shoch, et al. 2017. Natural Climate Solutions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: 11645-11650. PSB 70 (3) 2024 234 Knutson, R.M. 1974. Heat production and temperature regulation in the Eastern skunk cabbage. Science 186: 746-747. Lenton, T. M., M. Crouch, M. Johnson, N. Pires, and L. Dolan. 2012. First plants cooled the Ordovician. Na- ture Geoscience 5: 86-89. Lenton, T. M., T. W. Dahl, S. J. Daines, B. J. W. Mills, K. Ozaki, M. R. Saltzman, and P. Porada. 2016. Ear- liest land plants created modern levels of atmospheric oxygen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: 9704-9709. Pickett-Heaps, J., and J. Pickett-Heaps. 1984. Living Cells: Structure, Function, Diversity [DVD]. Sinauer (Oxford University Press). Pörtner, H.-O., R. J. Scholes, A. Arneth, D. K. A. Barnes, M. T. Burrows, S. E. Diamond, C. M. Duarte, et al. 2023. Overcoming the coupled climate and biodiver- sity crises and their societal impacts. Science 380: 256. Qiu, Y. L., Y. Cho, J. C. Cox, and J. D. Palmer. 1999. The gain of three mitochondrial introns identifies liv- erworts as the earliest land plants. Nature 394: 671-674. Zielinski, C. et al. 2023. Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergen- cy. British Medical Journal 383: 2355. [This editorial was published in many journals.] 235 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years By Marshall D. Sundberg Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor of Biology – Emeritus, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS As a college sophomore in 1968, I was first introduced to a novel way of instruction by my botany professor, William Muir. Muir’s approach was unique in many ways, starting with the fact that he had just lost his sight as a complication of diabetes. He lectured, without notes, and drew sketches on the board using one hand as a placeholder as he sketched—and then quizzed us to be sure we understood what was being illustrated. If you were the one called on, you would have to carefully describe what you saw and what it meant—carefully enough that someone who could not see it (Dr. Muir) would understand what you meant. For the rest of my career, this was a tool I would use, particularly in lectures, whether it be for small seminars or lectures of more than 300 students. Several examples are described below, and many are also included in Uno et al. (2013). (Copies of this book are still available from the BSA office: https://crm.botany.org/civicrm/ contribute/transact?reset=1&id=8.) textbook, as necessary, during the course of the class. This was only done occasionally, and for “big” things in the introductory course, but it was a main component of upper division courses. For the latter, this consisted of mimeographed handouts of corrections, elaborations, or current research, related to the chapter being discussed. I still have many of these as folded chapter inserts in undergraduate textbooks I’ve kept in my library. I’ll give some examples below of the kind of textbook “updating” I used in class. The “mimeo Using Inquiry as a Tool to Help Students Develop a More Sophisticated Understanding of Frequently Misunderstood Concepts handouts” remain the model I use when reviewing manuscripts and textbooks. his philosophy of science. Virtually every science teacher I ever had, including Muir, emphasized the power of science in developing an understanding of nature. But Muir also emphasized the limits of science. The usual way of doing science emphasizes finding a solution to a particular problem, but this narrow focus often results in unintended consequences that might have been avoided if a broader perspective was used. Especially in applied science, implementation is often dependent on many different non-science constraints: economic, legal, environmental, social, religious, and more. Finally, the fact that science grows by building on the foundation of existing knowledge (accretion) makes it very difficult to accept any paradigm- shifting innovation. I begin with my favorite example of a paradigm shift that occurred during my career. Accepting a Paradigm Shift Endosymbiotic Origin of Eukaryotic Cells In the 1960s, it was just becoming accepted that bacteria and blue-green algae were closely related and shared features termed Prokaryotic. PSB 70 (3) 2024 236 One taxonomic question was “Should at least the bacteria be split out of the Plant Kingdom?” The author of my textbook (Cronquist, 1961) put them together in a single division separate from the rest of plants. Regardless, everyone agreed that blue-greens evolved from bacteria and the green algae probably did as well. Both were the result of repeated mutations, recombinations, and natural selection over the course of millions of years. At the start of my Plant Evolution course, Spring Term 1970, Muir made us aware that a young biologist, Lynn Sagan [Margulis] had published a paper 3 years earlier suggesting eukaryotic cells arose via symbiosis between pre-existing prokaryotic cells. Two years later, as a rookie grad student, I listened to her plenary address at the 1972 American Institute of Biological Sciences Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. It was in Northrup Auditorium with several thousand biologists present. At the end of her talk, half the audience was politely applauding, but the rest were jeering! This was my introduction to professional scientific meetings and thankfully, I’ve never seen anything like it again. Evolution by anything other than natural selection was considered heretical. Endosymbiosis is one of those paradigm shifts that is now well accepted, and I’ve told this story every time I’ve taught it. I approach this in class by presenting the traditional interpretation, the new alternative, then asking for what kind of evidence would be necessary to support the alternative. Now, here’s the evidence and we can move forward. Primary Root Growth This is an example where the lecture component is covered in “Inquiring about Plants” (pp. 80-85). Briefly, I present students with a macrophotograph of a growing root tip and ask individuals to describe different parts of the image and/or speculate on the possible function of a particular part. We finally focus on the “naked” tip and switch to a photomicrograph of a longitudinal section showing the root/root cap junction (Figure 1). patterns they observe and to predict how cell divisions might produce these patterns. Finally, based on their interpretation, where would they expect most cell divisions to occur? The patterns suggest this should be near the arrow in the figure and this, in fact, is what was in Cronquist’s (1961) textbook. I then show the radiomicrograph and explain how it was made (Figure 2). Onion roots were grown for 24 hours in a tritiated thymidine solution so that any nucleus that underwent mitosis would pick up the radioactive tracer. The dark spots cover nuclei that picked up the tracer. The region we thought would have the highest mitotic activity actually has the least: the quiescent center. This was first proposed by Clowes (1950), but it was 6 years before he confirmed his theory using radioactive tracers as shown above. I then challenge the students to devise an experiment we could actually do in our laboratory, in a single lab period, to confirm the presence of a quiescent center. The hint is mitosis and we’ll see this below. career include transposable elements modifying the Central Dogma of DNA and the role of epigenetics in producing “inheritance of acquired characteristics”: a neo-Lamarckian, and even neo-Darwinian “gemmules” concept. A possible paradigm shift, in process during the last decade, relates to consciousness and behavior in plants. Schlanger (2024) provides a readable, well- documented lay account of the current status of this theory. Challenging the Textbook Primary Growth of Roots Clowes (1950) first discovered the quiescent center by looking at the distribution of mitotic figures in longitudinal sections of root tips. This is where I lead students in my question above. However, what I’m interested in during this lab is not just finding evidence of the quiescent center, but in examining the relationship between cell division and cell enlargement in the growth of the root. For the latter, any old onion root tip slide will do, but if you also want to identify the quiescent center you must use a near-median section. When I first developed this activity, I examined every onion root tip slide in the department’s collection for all courses. Out of more than 200 slides, only 22 were near median and I set these PSB 70 (3) 2024 237 aside specifically for this lab. The procedure for this lab is detailed in Sundberg (1981). Students observe four sequential fields of view, at 40X, beginning with the intersection between the root cap and root apical meristem at the bottom edge of the first field. They must determine the average cell length and width from median vertical and horizontal files across the field. Estimate the total number of cells in the field by dividing the area of the field by the area of a single cell and calculate the mitotic index (MI) (number of cells showing mitotic figures / total number of cells) X 100. (An additional benefit of this lab is the necessity to do some basic mathematical computations.) To indicate the presence of the quiescent center, divide the total number of cells in the field by 3 and separately calculate MI for the estimated bottom, middle, and top thirds of the first field of view, centered just above the root cap (fields IA, IB, and IC). When data collection is completed for this field, move the slide so cells at the top edge of the original field are now at the bottom of the new field of view and observe and collect data for the entire field II. This process is repeated for fields III and IV. Plot the data as in Figure 3. In general, as you move from the tip to the base of the root, the average cell length increases and the MI decreases. The low MI in field IA is an indication of the quiescent center. These is the types of data originally used by Clowes to predict its presence. longitudinal root they observed and then, based on their data, label the zones of cell division, cell elongation, and cell maturation as is often found in textbooks. Figure 4A is from Campbell (Urry et al., 2023) and 4B is from Raven and Johnson (Raven et al., 2023). Do you see the difference in the labelling of these zones? Which figure is supported by the student data in Figure 3? (Hint: Are the zones discrete or do they overlap?) Monocot Stem Structure One of my favorite examples of challenging the textbook in lecture involves the structure of monocot stems, and I feature it in “Inquiring about Plants.” Most biology textbooks describe Figure 1. Longitudinal section of a maize root at inter- section between the root cap (below) and tip of the root apical meristem. Figure 2. Radiomicrograph of an onion root tip in medi- an longitudinal section. Black covers nuclei that emitted radiation by incorporating labelled thymidine into their DNA following cell division. PSB 70 (3) 2024 238 Figure 3. Comparison of Mitotic Index (open circles) and Average Cell Length (closed circles) along root tip axis from junction with root cap (IA) towards root hair region (IV). Figure 4. Comparison figures of Zones of Cell Division, Elongation, and Differentiation in two popular contemporary textbooks. (A) Urey et al., 2023. (B) Mason et al., 2023. A B PSB 70 (3) 2024 239 the vascular bundles of monocots stems as being “scattered throughout the ground tissue” (Urry et al., 2023 [p. 768]; Raven et al., 2023 [p. 778]). Figure 5A is a photomicrograph of a maize stem that I put on the screen for the class. I then ask them to observe it carefully and make a sketch, filling a full page of their notebook, of the general tissue regions they observe. I circulate through the class with a blank overhead transparency sheet observing the student sketches, but with no comments. When I find one that clearly shows some patterns, I’ll ask that student to trace her sketch on the overhead sheet. Figure 5B is a typical example. As a class we’ll then go through the sketch noting any observed patterns, labeling parts, and adding additional patterns observed by other students. concentric rings of bundles, (2) bundle density greater in outside rings than interior ones; (3) bundle size greater in interior bundles than outside ones, (4) bundles seem to alternate from one ring to the next, (5) there is noticeable cell differentiation within bundles, and (6) bundles always orient in the same direction relative to the surface, regardless of where they occur in the stem. A close-up photomicrograph (Figure 6) makes it easier to see cell differences within a bundle. A last question, which they’ll turn in on a ¼ sheet of scratch paper, is: Which direction is the nearest epidermis in Figure 6: left, top, right, or bottom? How do you know? Students identify definite patterns of bundles within the stem; they are not simply “scattered.” In fact, they are precisely arranged, and studies of serial sections can predict which bundle of which leaf, up and down the stem, every one of these stem bundles will supply (Pizzolato and Sundberg, 2002). Figure 5. (A) Cross-section of maize stem. (B) Student sketch of A. Figure 6. (A) Magnification of portion of Figure 5A. (B) Student sketch of A. A PSB 70 (3) 2024 240 Plant Migration on Mountains and Climate Change This is another example from “Inquiring about Plants” (pp. 135-146). In brief, Humboldt suggested that the change in plant communities, as elevation increases in the mountains, is similar to that observed with increasing latitude on Earth. We also know that the combination of average temperature and average precipitation in a region allows us to predict the plant communities (biomes) that will be present. Given the warming associated with climate change, what would you predict will happen, over time, to the various plant communities occurring on the sides of a mountain? It seems obvious that as the climate warms, plant communities will migrate to higher elevations. elevation for 73 tree species in the Coast Range of Northern California since the 1930s. Do the data support your prediction for the effect of climate change? Why or why not? What other factor most likely accounts for the unexpected decreased elevations in so many species? Hint: go back to the two factors we know we can use to predict plant communities/biomes we will find in an area. Size and Distribution of Stomata in Desert Plants My final example is an extension of the stomata section of “Inquiring about Plants,” where we ask is there a relationship between the number of stomata and the environment of the plant (pp. 45–47)? It seems logical to predict that there is a decrease in stomatal density with increasing drought and that stomata should be restricted only to the lower surface of leaves in desert plants. One of my early students in freshman botany tested this for his independent class project and got some unexpected results. I followed this up with a grant to work at the Desert Botanical Garden near Phoenix (Sundberg, 1986). In fact, three-fourths of the 111 species examined were amphistomatic, and only semi-woody xerophytes had a higher frequency on the lower (abaxial) surface than the upper surface (Table 2). Leaf and stem succulents did have the lowest stomatal densities, but they also, unexpectedly, had the largest stomata (Figure 7). Some seasonally dehiscent desert trees had more than 500 stomata/mm 2. In summary, classroom inquiry can not only improve students’ understanding of the scientific concepts we teach but sometimes their naïve, unbiased, observations can uncover new connections and expand our understanding of science. learner through inquiry, I have used this approach in my own teaching and learning pedagogy. I particularly focus on common misconceptions held by many students (and the general public) and challenge them with data supporting more sophisticated understanding and a philosophy of lifetime learning (Sundberg and Moncada, 1994). Table 1. Change in elevation of 73 montane tree species in the Coast Range of California. Highlighted numbers are statistically significant changes. PSB 70 (3) 2024 241 REFERENCES Clowes, F. A. L. 1950. Root apical meristems of Fagus syl- vatica. New Phytologist 49: 248-268. Cronquist, A. 1961. Introductory Botany. New York, Harper & Row. Table 2. Position of stomates on leaves of desert plants. Figure 7. Trends of stomatal lengths on stomatal den- sity for various life forms of desert plants: (A) Seasonally deciduous; (B) Semiwoody,; (C) Drought deciduous; (D) Leaf succulent; (E) Stem succulent; (F) Green stem; (G) Evergreen; (H) Ephemeral. WEISS shows trend of tem- perate mesophytic plants. Pizzolato, T. D., and M. D. Sundberg. 2002. Initiation of the vascular system in the shoot of Zea mays L. (Poaceae) II. The procambial leaf traces. International Journal of Plant Sciences 162: 353-367. Raven, P. H., G. B. Johnson, K. A. Mason, J. B. Losos, and T. Duncan. 2023. Biology, ed 13. New York, McGraw Hill. Schlanger, Z. 2024. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. New York, Harper Collins. Sundberg, M. D. 1981. Making the Most of Onion Root Tip Mitosis. The American Biology Teacher 43: 386-388. Sundberg, M. D. 1986. A comparison of stomatal distribu- tion and length in succulent and non-succulent desert plants. Phytomorphology 36: 53-66. Sundberg, M. D., and G. J. Moncada. 1994. Creating effec- tive investigative laboratories for undergraduates. BioSci- ence 44: 698-704. Uno, G. E., M. D. Sundberg, and C. A. Hemingway. 2013. Inquiring About Plants: A Practical Guide to Engaging Sci- ence Practices. St. Louis, Botanical Society of America. Fig- ure 4A is from Campbell (Urry et al., 2023) and 4B is from Raven and Johnson (Mason et al., 2023). Urry, L. A., M. L. Cain, S. A. Wasserman, P. V. Minorsky, and J. B. Reece. 2023. Campbell Biology, ed 11. New York, Pearson. Weiss, A. 1865. Untersuchungen uber die Zahlenund Gross- verhaltnisse der Spatoffnungen. Jarbuch fur Wissenschafli- 242 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years How can we encourage our students to look at plants like Georgia O’Keeffe did? Slowing down, taking time to really look at plants, being a careful observer of the living world, appreciating their beauty and instilling curiosity to look, notice, and go back for more. to learning and curiosity. Do you remember the first time you made a drawing of a flower or picked a bouquet of dandelions? Did you stop drawing because you were not an artist? Did you stop collecting dandelions because they are “just weeds”? We urge teachers of botany to both remember our roots, the joy of discovery, the historical and contemporary importance of drawing in teaching botany, and to further explore fine-arts practices outside of traditional botanical Don’t Forget Our Roots: Learning with Drawing By Stefanie M. Ickert-Bond 1 and Brett C. Couch 2,3 1 University of Alaska Museum of the North, Herbarium, and Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1962 Yukon Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA 2 University of British Columbia, Depart- ments of Botany and Zoology, 3156-6270 University Blvd, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada Thesis and Philosophy “’If one painted a flower the size it is, nobody would look at it. When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it,’—and she cupped a strong, exquisite hand and held it close to her face—’it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.’” Georgia O’Keeffe (in an interview with Mary Braggiotti [1946]) drawing. To rekindle curiosity and the excitement of exploration of the botanical world, we propose that students should be encouraged to value the process not just the product: make it fun. has a long history in botany for a very good reason; to draw or paint something, you need to look carefully. Although Leonardo Da Vinci is well known for his painting, Mona Lisa, he also studied human anatomy and botany. His approach to science was observational, and he filled sketchbooks and journals with detailed observations to understand the world he observed such as his study of Ornithogalum sp. and other plants (Figure 1A). His journals also illustrate how he used drawing as part of his thought process as PSB 70 (3) 2024 243 an artist and inventor. In one example he created analogies between the leaves of plants and the forces of water in the water eddies (Figure 1). to look first and look again, again and again. Discover the joy of looking and discovering; handling and dissecting plants, exploring and documenting local flora, and doing fieldwork provides context for other observations. We want students to develop observational skills as a habit of mind. We want to train students to deal with the reality that nature is messy and realize that perfect drawings from a textbook rarely capture the diversity they will encounter when observing plants or other features of the natural world. The challenges of observing nature and the insights gained from careful observation are also highlighted in Da Vinci’s study of moving water. He observed and described the three-dimensional nature of flowing water, and developed the idea that turbulent flows consist of a range of co- existing eddies, varying in scale from large to small (Figure 1B)—but it was not until 1941 that this concept was mathematically formalized by A. N. Kolmogorov as the “cascade model of turbulence” published first in Russian (1941) with an English translation not appearing in print until 1991. One of our classical mentors is Charles Edwin Bessey, who created the first undergraduate botanical laboratory in the United States, used and encouraged drawing in teaching, and had students draw from collected specimens in the lab. His motto was “Science with Practice,” and he expected students to learn for themselves. A quote from his 1896 book The Essentials of Botany illustrates how he expected drawing to be used as part of learning about plants (Figure 2): “In the use of this book I must urge that it is intended to serve as a guide only to the teacher and student. The student must actually see as much as possible of what is here brought to his notice. The book simply marshals in logical order the objects to be studied …. the young botanist should not be content to obtain all his facts at second hand; he must see with his own eyes all that may be seen” (Bessey, 1896) From here we hope to inspire you to explore other approaches to using drawing in your classes. Figure 1. Drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci. (A) Star of Bethlehem Ornithogalum sp., and other plants c.1506-1512. Wikimedia Commons. (B) Studies of water passing obstacles and falling, c. 1508-1509. Wikimedia Commons. A B PSB 70 (3) 2024 244 How Instructors Use Drawing in Teaching From our own undergraduate education, we enjoyed the instructors who gave us time to appreciate botany, those who slowed down instruction by using drawings, and those who encouraged us to explore the subjects carefully and record our observations. Lectures in our undergraduate botany courses consisted of the professor using vertical-sliding chalkboards that were each filled with botanical drawings to illustrate the lecture content and were available to review after class. Unlike listening to a lecture or viewing a static image—activities in which students passively absorb information—these interactive, progressive, drawings actively engage students to record the lecture content. Today, we continue this tradition, with some added tech; as instructors we make use of drawings in our teaching to illustrate plant structures and convey information about taxonomically important structures. We try to create classes that are both engaging and foster slowing down and looking. The Learning Glass or Lightboard platform is a high-tech version of drawing on the blackboard, but with a technological twist. It creates a visual connection with the instructor who makes these Learning Glass lectures particularly engaging. During the use of the Learning Glass, a large piece of glass ringed by LED lights, the instructor stands behind the glass and uses fluorescent markers to draw on the glass, and the ink catches the light from the LED and glows clearly. The Learning Glass software collapses the perspective of the viewer and presenter into one shared perspective, allowing students to view the instructor in real time drawing and communicating with them, while getting visual and textual reinforcement of content (e.g., interactive progressive drawing). Students presented with classes using the Learning Glass had better knowledge retention over the same timescale as content delivered through PowerPoint (Hennige, 2020). Research has also shown that making drawings or sketches increases retention of information compared with taking in class written notes (Fernandes et al., 2018; Higley et al., 2024); in botany, which uses a lot of specialized terminology, drawings paired with terminology are particularly valuable for helping students retain information presented. Drawings need not be artistic—instead the drawing process is the main educational benefit of drawing, which Higley et al. (2024) elaborate on in their “Value of Bad Drawing in Teaching.” We recorded many Learning Glass lectures for BIOL195 - Introduction into Flora of Alaska at the University of Alaska (Ickert-Bond and Kaden, 2022) and have made these available on Botany Depot (see Appendix) and on our class website (https://introtoflora. Figure 2. Illustration of Bessey’s classification of diatoms (Bessey, 1900). PSB 70 (3) 2024 245 What Do Students Do: Drawing in Labs and in the Field (or “A Pencil Is the Best of Eyes”) The first step in learning to observe is to slow down and take time. As Georgia O’Keeffe noted, people, like our students, are busy and often don’t take time to look. One approach we have found that sets the stage for practicing slowing down and looking is to take students out of their comfort zone of the science lab and into an art gallery. Students are led through a slow looking activity using the Visual Thinking Strategies framework (Yenawine, 2013) with artwork that is chosen specifically because it is visually complex and something that students haven't seen before. This puts all of the participants on the same level in terms of experience with the work and so they cannot easily draw on previous knowledge or preconceptions. Students spend approximately 30 minutes looking at a work and responding to the prompts: (1) What do you see? (2) What makes you say that? and (3) What else do you see? This activity sets the tone for the entire semester in the lab. Students are then introduced to a variety of drawing and sketching activities that are typical in studio arts classes and that are intended to practice observing rather than producing finished drawings. An example is gesture drawing (Figure 3A–B). This is a very fast, timed, drawing of a subject—typically 15 to 60 seconds. Students are given various objects (pinecones, fern leaves, flowers) and given only 15 to 60 seconds to quickly capture as much of the object as possible. The drawings often look like scribbles; the purpose is not to capture a realistic representation, but rather to practice seeing the entire thing and recording some general features or ideas. A second type of activity is blind contour drawing, a slow looking activity. The idea here is to take a longer period (10–30 minutes) and slowly “trace” the contours (edges of a subject). The observer needs to convince themselves that the pencil is actually touching the edge of the object as they slowly move the pencil over the paper to draw the contour (Nicolaïdes, 1975). The catch here is that the student is not to look at the paper while they are drawing. The entire focus is on the contour of the object. By design, the drawing will not be a perfectly accurate representation of the object being drawn—the drawings are often rather funny—but the purpose is not a completed drawing, but to practice focused observation. Through the term, students will also practice the manual dexterity skills required for making drawings by doing simple doodles and activities that focus on making different types of marks. Each lab period begins with a doodle activity and some activity that focuses on some specific element of observation—layered drawings to show movement or sequential observations (Figure 3D). (Couch et al., 2023). Students then apply these skills to making sketches of microscopic structures or organisms. and observing, practiced with various drawing activities, provide an inroad to further development of visual literacy in students. For Figure 3. Examples of different drawing and sketching techniques by Brett Couch (2023). (A) Gesture draw- ing of dandelion, (B) details added to part A, (C) detail drawing of leaf venation, and (D) layered drawing of amoeba. PSB 70 (3) 2024 246 example, the ability to interpret and comprehend visual information in the sciences like graphs, figures, models, and diagrams increased by: (1) using sketches to develop or communicate ideas, and thinking through problems like diagramming an experimental design, or making predictions about patterns of data consistent with a particular hypothesis; (2) using visual media to communicate effectively in the form of figures or graphical abstracts; and (3) providing a mechanism of visualizing abstract concepts such as a gene on a chromosome. Multiple authors have recognized the value of drawing across biology and STEM for communication and learning (Waldrip et al., 2010; Ainsworth et al., 2011; Landin, 2011; Tyler et al., 2018). Landin (2013) summarized the importance of drawing: “It’s weird how much visual information I miss until I draw an object. Our brain just skips over details that don’t fit with our preconceptions. When we draw, we have to include everything—and that leads to learning.” We encourage you to think about ways of creating experiences for your students that engage them to use drawing iteratively and repeatedly, and in ways that promote curiosity, thinking, and learning— to reveal the joy in slowing down and making a flower, a leaf, or a whole plant their world for a moment. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors acknowledge the generous support of a CITE fellowship (Chancellor’s Innovation in Teaching & eLearning Program, UAF) to S.I.B. for developing the asynchronous BIOL190 Introduction to Alaska Flora course and support from eCampus, and the amazing instructional designers, especially Christen Booth, eCampus Creative Director, as well as support for Brandon Corder, and Nkosi Evans (the University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Todd Widhelm (The Field Museum of Natural History) from the United States National Science Foundation (DBI-2001509) for the collaborative project, Building a Global Consortium of Bryophytes and Lichens: Keystones of Cryptobiotic Communities (GLOBAL; https://globaltcn.utk.edu/) to support the creation of the lichen and bryophyte learning glass videos at UAF. Thanks also to Dr. Shelly Rosenblum (Curator of Academic Programs at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, UBC), Holly Schmidt (artist and educator), and the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery and for their work in developing and hosting activities for biology students at UBC. We also like to thank the organizer of the symposium at Botany 2024, “Bessey’s Legacy: Enthusiasm and Innovation in Botanical Instruction,” for supporting our participation and encouraging this submission and the many mentors and teachers who have shared their passion for teaching and drawing. REFERENCES Ainsworth, S., V. Prain, and R. Tytler. 2011. Drawing to learn in science. Science: 333: 1096–1097. York: Henry and Holt Company. structure and classification of diatoms, with a revision of the tribes and a rearrangement of the North Ameri- can genera. Transactions of the American Microscopi- cal Society 21: 61–86. Post (16 May 1946), 45. Training a biologist’s mind through an artist’s eye. Ad- vances in Biology Laboratory Instruction 43: 1–15. 2018. The surprisingly powerful influence of drawing on memory. Current Directions in Psychological Sci- ence 27: 302–308. teachers and students for enhancing learning experi- ence. Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme Report. The University of Edinburgh. Website: https://www.docs. hss.ed.ac.uk/iad/Learning_teaching/Academic_teach- ing/PTAS/Outputs/PTAS_Learning_Glass_report_ Higley, L. G., P. M. Higley, and T. Brosius. 2024. The value of ‘bad’ drawing in teaching. The American Biol- ogy Teacher 86: 136–142. PSB 70 (3) 2024 247 Ickert-Bond, S. M., and U. Kaden. 2022. North to the Future: A new asynchronous delivery of the classic “flora class” at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas 16: 343–356. bulence in incompressible viscous fluid for very large Reynolds numbers. Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 30: 301–305 [in Russian] bulence in incompressible viscous fluid for very large Reynolds numbers. Proceedings Royal Society London A 434: 9–13. Landin, J. 2011. Perceptual Drawing as a Learning Tool in a College Biology Laboratory. Dissertation. North Carolina University, Raleigh, North Carolina. Drawing to improve observational skills and understanding. ArtPlantae blog, 1 September 2013. Website: https://artplantae. com/2013/09/01/drawing-to-improve-observational- skills-and-understanding/ ing plan for art study. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. tation construction as a core Science disciplinary lit- eracy. In K.-S. Tang and K. Danielsson (eds.), Global developments in literacy research for science educa- tion, 301-317. London: Routledge. multi-modal representations to improve learning in ju- nior secondary science. Research in Science Education 40: 65–80. art to deepen learning across school disciplines. Cam- bridge: Harvard Education Press. Appendix I. Talk at the Bessey Symposium at Botany 2024 in Grand Rapids, Michigan • The Google Slides can be found at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/ d/10YNrZVBC0pA2JLgRLYG- cumqrZ5lVEIZsAUqt1ME7uU/ e II. Learning Glass Lectures (LGLs) • Most LGLs can be found on the BIOL190- Introduction to Alaska Flora website, under the individual modules, here are those for module 1: https://introtoflora. • Angiosperm life cycle: https://media.uaf. edu/media/t/0_lxrrkn0o • A complete listing of LGLs can be found on Botany Depot https://botanydepot. com/2020/03/13/online-course-intro- to-alaska-flora-by-stefanie-ickert-bond/ Four new LGLs were completed in spring 2024: • Bryophytes Versus Lichens Comparison https://media.uaf.edu/media/ • How to ID Mosses - https://media.uaf. • Life Cycles of Bryophytes and Lichens https://media.uaf.edu/media/t/1_ • Basic Lichen Biology - https://media. III. Virtual Herbarium • https://www.thinglink.com/ 248 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years By Bruce Kirchhoff Emeritus and Adjunct Professor of Biology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC There are two aspects to great teaching: The first and most important is to be yourself and to share yourself with your students in ways that enhance their learning. The second is to make sure that your students do most of the work. Learning these lessons took me almost 25 years of classroom experience and resulted in several major teaching awards, including the Bessey Award. I share my insights here in the hope that it will not take you quite as long for similar achievements. to present with enthusiasm. Let your students see your love for your subject. Your enthusiasm will reach them better than any content you deliver. It sounds easy, but presenting with enthusiasm without losing intellectual focus takes practice. One thing that helped me to show my enthusiasm was to begin each lecture with a joke related to my course content. Since, at the end of my career, I most frequently taught Plant Diversity and Plant Systematics, all of my jokes were related to these subjects. What worked best for me was to find a visual joke related to the course content and present it at the beginning of class, just before I asked opening student-response questions. If I could not find a joke that fit the class, I created one. The jokes I chose were never wildly funny, but they were entertaining. For instance, I found this joke on the web: There is a picture of an abandoned car that is covered with ivy with the question, “Why are plants capable of consuming cars?” I would enthusiastically ask the class “Well, why?” After several wrong guesses, I would reveal The Two Rules of Great Teaching: Present with Enthusiasm and Make Your Students Do the Work the answer on the next slide: “Because they are auto-trophic.” Occasionally a student would get this correct and I would react with joy, throwing my arms up and almost shouting “YES!” and maybe adding “Someone was paying attention in Intro Bio!” during other parts of the class. For instance, my quizzes and exams always included a question on mitosis and miosis. Although I did not cover these subjects in my classes, I felt that the students should all have a basic understanding of the difference between mitosis and meiosis before they graduated. For some students these questions provided free points, but more than half the class regularly missed them. Right at the beginning of the semester, during the first lecture, I would say something like this: “You all learned about mitosis and meiosis in introductory biology. Some of you have had genetics, where you learned about them again. How many of you remember the difference?” (Maybe 2 people out of 24 raise their hands.) “That is what I thought [said with great humor]! Well, in this class you will have the opportunity to test your knowledge because every quiz, every test, and many clicker quizzes will PSB 70 (3) 2024 249 have a question about mitosis and meiosis. For some of you these will be free points [said with enthusiasm]! That is great! I want to give you free points! However, for some of you these questions will be a source of never-ending frustration [said with a hint of sadness]. You will always be asking yourself, ‘How did I miss that AGAIN?!’ Take my advice. Review the difference between mitosis and meiosis so you are not pulling your hair out at the end of each quiz [I mime pulling out my hair and show them my bald head]. You see where this leads!” By miming pulling out my hair, I show the students that I am just as foolish as they are—that I have made all the same mistakes. This, and similar gestures throughout the class, gives the students permission to accept their own mistakes with grace, and even to laugh at them. I have found that this attitude does much more to enhance learning than any serious admonitions I might use. on mitosis or meiosis and 60% of the class got it correct, I would enthusiastically congratulate them and then speak to the 40% of the class that missed the question. I might again mime pulling out my hair and remind them that these are supposed to be free points and that if they do not want to end up like me (I tap my bald head) then they should really review mitosis and meiosis. Then after class I might post some links to good review sites. Some students will continue to miss these questions no matter what I do, but even if they never learn the difference between mitosis and meiosis, the class atmosphere that I create with these types of interactions helps the students feel comfortable and encourages them to work hard. enthusiasm and jokes to promote student learning. One fall break I went to the beach for a few days. While there I drew one of the life cycles we were learning in the sand and took a picture of it. That picture was the opening slide of the first lecture after break. The caption read “Why? What do you do at the beach?” (Figure 1). Although most of my students worked at least half time and had been working over break, this joke reminded them that they should not forget the class material just because they were otherwise engaged. Jokes like this reminded them of the seriousness of the material without hitting them over the head with it. with enthusiasm, I hope that these examples give you some idea of how I approached my class. You can see that there is a definite advantage to being bald. students do the work. Presenting with enthusiasm creates a class atmosphere that is conducive to learning, but the students must still learn the material. The only way to do this is for them to do the hard work of learning. I believe that our task as instructors is to make this hard work seem like fun, at least as much as possible. I do not mean to minimize the work that the students have to do. I strongly believe that the only way to learn is through hard work. However, if the students will not do the work you assign, they cannot learn. An example of what could be an extremely effective learning method will make this clear. I call this the White Paper Method. blank paper, a pencil, and a copy of the material that the student wants to learn. This can be their lecture notes, notes provided by their instructor, or their textbook. Once the student has identified the material for their study session, they close their notes and take out the paper and pencil. They Figure 1. A life cycle drawn in the sand. PSB 70 (3) 2024 250 then recreate, with as much detail as possible, the material they want to learn. Let’s say that they want to learn the life cycle of a vascular plant like Pinus. On their blank piece of paper, they draw the life cycle in as much detail as they can. It does not matter if they can draw only a small portion of the life cycle. Once they have done this as best they can, they compare their work to their notes and correct their work so that they have a perfectly drawn life cycle. It is best if they do this in a different color so they reinforce what they have yet to learn. Now comes the most important part. They take their corrected work and throw it away and take out a blank piece of paper. On this paper they draw the life cycle again. Since they just reviewed it, they will do a better job. When they correct this version as they did the first, there will be fewer corrections. If they have not gotten it fully correct, they repeat the White Paper process until they can draw the life cycle perfectly from memory. That ends this study session for this content. If they repeat this process at least one more time before the exam, they will ace any questions on this life cycle. The White Paper Method is extremely effective! I have had a student go from failing at midterm to a B in the class by using this method. That means she went from failing every test, to getting an A on every test. This is an amazing accomplishment. that the students will not do it. The student I just mentioned was a soccer player and if she had failed my class she would have been kicked off the team. She was successful because of this incentive and because her coach made her use the White Paper Method. Most students do not have this incentive and, for whatever reason, will not use this method. way to get the students to do the work that they are unable to do on their own. There are several ways I approached this problem. Perhaps some of them will appeal to you. student learning is to create effective homework. The archetype of effective homework is the White Paper Method, but we already know that students will not do this on their own. Can we fool them into doing it with creative assignments? One way I found to do this involves weekly in-class quizzes. In my Plant Diversity class, I expected the students to be able to draw even complex life cycles from memory. To get them to do this, I would first draw the life cycle with them in class, sometimes asking them to draw it from memory during the class period and then going over the life cycle with them as they corrected it on their papers. You will recognize this as the first iteration of the White Paper Method. To get them to continue the process at home, I would tell them which life cycles were candidates for next week’s quiz. Early in the class there were few choices, but late in the semester there were so many that telling them that any life cycle was fair game would overwhelm them and they would do poorly. If I told them to expect one of the following three life cycles on next week’s quiz, they would make sure that they could draw them from memory and the vast majority of the students would get full credit. This made grading very simple. I only needed to glance at a life cycle to see that it was correct. Grading could be done quite quickly. Over the course of a few weeks, I could cover all of the required life cycles with near-perfect performance. In this case I used in- class quizzes to create the incentive for students to do the work on their own. the material when one has to teach it to others. With this in mind, I began requiring my students to present some of the lectures in my classes. In Plant Systematics, the students presented almost all of the plant families. I presented a few at the beginning of the class to give them examples of what I expected, then the students took over, presenting the family characteristics for the rest of the semester. I gave them very explicit instructions on what to include (see links below), and most students did very well. To my surprise they did even better when they presented online during Covid. I suspect that this was because I allowed them to present with their cameras off, which relieved much of their anxiety. the first few lectures before turning the rest of the material over to the students. My approach to this PSB 70 (3) 2024 251 material was unusual in that I had the student’s present chapters from The Origin (1 st ed), and a graduate text by Kemp, Fossils and Evolution. I found that Darwin spoke to the students in ways that contemporary texts could not. Darwin was writing to an audience that doubted the correctness of his theory. He wrote to persuade, not to present facts. This approach was much more meaningful to my students, many of whom came from religious backgrounds where they were encouraged to avoid any discussion of evolution. A fuller description of my approach in this class can be found at the following link: https://sites. google.com/view/active-learning-in-use/ . a class is to have them take notes. For years I wondered how I could do this without requiring the students to turn in their notes, which would require an inordinate amount of grading. The Covid pandemic provided an opportunity to try a new method, with good success. I was teaching Plant Systematics when my university closed. Since the students presented many of the lectures in this class, I had to use synchronous class time for these lectures. To accommodate this, I decided to record my lectures and present them asynchronously. In order to ensure that the students were paying attention, I required them to turn in their notes using our course management system (Canvas). Most students took notes on paper and photographed them using one of the many phone apps created for this purpose. Many of my students used Genius Scan. I used a three- tier grading system for these notes: good (100%), needs work (50%), no credit (0%). After a few lectures I could show the students examples of good notes (with the note-taker’s permission). Soon 98% of the students were getting full credit. This made grading very easy. In fact, I spent more time waiting for the digital files to load in Canvas than I did grading the student’s work. Some of the notes were amazingly good. I still wonder if it would be possible to get students to take good notes in face-to-face lectures, but I never succeeded in this before I retired. Perhaps some variation on these procedures will work for you. In closing, it would be remiss of me to fail to mention my work creating visual learning software. I will not go into detail about this software here because it is described more fully elsewhere (see links below). The software is free and Open Source. I tested it in the classroom and found it to be extremely effective (Kirchoff et al., 2014). Stephanie Jeffries at North Carolina State has created an online version and extension of this software for use in teaching plant identification. The links to her work are also below. • Active Visual Learning Software: https:// sites.google.com/view/image-quiz/home • Teaching materials for a course on Plant Diversity: https://osf.io/69skm/ • Plant Life Cycle Diagrams: http://planted.botany.org/index. • Recorded lectures on Plant Diversity: https://www.youtube.com/@</p> • Recorded lectures on Plant Systematics: https:// www.youtube.com/@Plant_Systematics • White Paper Method: https://youtu.be/ • Stephanie Jeffries ILEX (Identify-Learn- Explore) online tool: https://sites.google. com/ncsu.edu/ncstatedendrology/ilex-study- REFERENCES Kirchoff, B. K., P. F. Delaney, M. Horton, and R. Del- linger-Johnston. 2014. Optimizing Learning of Scien- tific Category Knowledge in the Classroom: The Case of Plant Identification. CBE-Life Sciences Education 13: 425-436. 252 Bessey Award Winners Through the Years Growing up in Detroit and attending public schools, I thought I would become a doctor, lawyer, or writer. At that time, I had never heard of doing science for a career. But from my first Biology lab course at the University of Michigan, going on a walk outside looking at trees and insects, I discovered the great outdoors. In the end, I chose graduate school to let me continue doing just that. Undergrad Days My Botany education was fun and solid, with most courses delivered in the standard lecture format. The professors were talented lecturers, enthralling us with subject matter and amusing us with their personalities (Botany Professors Hiroshi Ikuma, Herb Wagner, Ed Voss; Zoology Professor Dan Janzen; Organic Chem with Professor Richard Lawton). I was a very good student and excellent note-taker, recording everything they said almost verbatim. Writing it all down helped me commit it to memory. Reading textbooks and papers, solving problems, and reviewing notes helped me succeed in almost every course. Some courses were less conventional. Dan Janzen’s Habitats and Organisms course consisted of non-stop lectures, to a huge audience in a darkened room, while showing us beautiful slideshows of animals and plants from around the world. In John Vandermeer’s Quantitative Ecology, we served as guinea pigs for his early textbook/workbook of problems (Vandermeer, 1981). Biochemistry used the self-directed “Keller Plan,” taking tests on every chapter complemented with lectures on extra material. Field experiences in courses at the University of Michigan Biological Station and as a research assistant to Sally Kleinfeldt in the woods The Evolution of an Educator By Suzanne Koptur Professor Emerita, Florida International University of New Hampshire let me see what research might be like. Although I also worked as a nurse’s aide for two summers (one in Detroit at Plymouth General Hospital, the other at Mott’s Children’s Hospital), which gave me a view of the medical world, I chose the path that would be more fun, with perhaps less job security and money, but more time outdoors and doing things I loved. Herbarium, working with Dr. Robert Shaffer to index the type collection of Fungi. I got some research experience with Dr. Rogers McVaugh, writing a Latin description of a newly discovered species of Pedicularis from Mexico (my first publication: McVaugh and Koptur, 1978). I wrote a senior thesis about extrafloral nectaries with a focus on aspen under the advice of Dan Janzen. During my undergrad time, I was lucky to be an assistant to Teaching Fellows (TFs as they were called, and we were TAs) in Practical Botany (taught at the Botanical Garden) and Plant Systematics on campus. Though headed in the Systematics direction, I shifted to Ecology because it seemed there was an endless supply of PSB 70 (3) 2024 253 interesting questions to investigate. I received a Noble Fellowship from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, doing my first tropical field work on Barro Colorado Island. Graduate Studies in California: A Whole New Flora! (And Then Some!) Entering grad school at Berkeley in the Botany Department as Teaching Assistants (TAs) in General Biology, we were required to take a weekly teaching seminar in addition to our twice- weekly TA meetings for General Biology, a two- quarter sequence directed by Dr. Bill Jensen. In the TA meetings, we learned the content and how to run the lab sessions, but in the seminar, we learned about good practices in science education. In my group of four TAs who all taught labs at the same time, two were grad students in the SESAME program (Search for Excellence in Science Education), which held a great appeal for me. Both suggested it might be best to stay in pure science, since I could always move to their field of science education later if I chose, but moving in the other direction might be harder. California Flora with Robert Ornduff, and a new basic botany course with Don Kaplan (along with fellow grad student Darlene DeMason). At Berkeley we taught labs, but we were also required to attend the corresponding lectures. I moonlighted as a note taker for the lecture courses in which I taught labs, for Black Lightning, a service run from a copy store where notes were copied and made available to subscribing students. I remember writing and typing them on mimeo sheets! I was unaware that this practice was controversial, as it evolved into some professors selling their lecture notes, etc. Nowadays (in fact, within the following decade), it is more common practice to provide lecture notes as part of the course materials for many professors. student at Berkeley, including Evolutionary Ecology taught by Herbert Baker, who highly valued teaching as a pursuit. In that course there were students from many departments (Botany, Forestry, Zoology, Entomology), providing connections for all of us with other parts of the university. Herbert’s lectures and demonstration labs were full of information, letting us take as much time as we wanted with his collection of articles, books, plant and animal examples, artifacts, etc. That was also the way he taught Economic Botany (see Baker, 1978). We solved problems using basic statistics and were expected to do a project of our own design. The field experiment I carried out at Tilden Park (taking the bus up into the Berkeley hills each time) was material for my first solo publication (Koptur, 1979). I learned a lot about prioritizing projects and publishing from James Hickman (thanks, Jim!), who had recently come to Berkeley with his wife, Carol Hickman. I also got to take the Organization for Tropical Studies’ Tropical Biology course in 1977, a full immersion introduction to the neotropics, doing faculty- led group and student-initiated field projects for several months. a grant received by my major professor, Herbert Baker, and entomologist Gordon Frankie, to study Phenology and Pollination in the Costa Rican Cloud Forest, a wonderful time of my life (Koptur et al., 1988). After the field work was done, I returned to Berkeley to write up my dissertation on the plant/animal interactions of Inga and was again a TA, for Plant Systematics, and then was an RA in the University herbarium. My final semester I was asked to teach the Plant Ecology lecture and lab because the regular professor (Rob Robichaux) was on sabbatical. He graciously shared all his notes with me, and I got my first insight into preparing for lectures in the traditional way. With Suzanne Morse as my TA, we had an adventurous and very fun semester with lots of field trips and field exercises in interesting places. PSB 70 (3) 2024 254 Postdoctoral Work in the Midwest and Across the Pond Completing my Doctorate in spring, and after unsuccessfully applying for many faculty positions in 1982, I took a teaching postdoc at the University of Iowa with Hank Howe, where I taught General Zoology labs and was in the company of some great tropical ecologists. This provided support (both financial and intellectual) while I wrote and published papers from my dissertation work and helped me get a NATO postdoc where I worked with John Lawton at the University of York, another wonderful time of my life. During these postdoc and early faculty times, I was also an investigator in the Naturalist-Ecologist Training Program during several summers at the University of Michigan Biological Station, a great experience for mentoring undergrads in independent research projects while pursuing my own research. I co- coordinated the Organization for Tropical Studies course in the summer of 1985 with my old buddy from undergrad days at the Michigan Biological Station, Bob Marquis—my first year as an assistant professor (see below). Training Paid Off All that teaching experience helped me get a job as an assistant professor at a young state university in Florida, Florida International University (FIU), where I was hired as a population biologist in 1985. I initially taught Gen Bio 2 and a graduate course in Evolutionary Ecology, as FIU was working toward an independent MS program. I later taught Introduction to Biological Research in our new graduate program and started teaching Ecology, then Plant Ecology in alternate years, along with workshops in Pollination and Field Techniques in Plant/Insect Interactions. I also stepped into Introductory Botany when David Lee and Jenny Richards moved on to other courses. I got some great ideas from workshops I took at the Botany meetings, including using portfolios in non-majors’ courses (thanks, Joe Armstrong!) and great hands-on materials for groups, passing out sections of the same stem or tree branch (thanks, Stokes Baker!). I also participated in Project FIRST—Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching Through Field Stations—and was part of the FIU team for several iterations of this NSF- funded project. I had previously arranged field trips to Archbold Bio Station (Swain, 2019) for some of my courses, but this brought together a community of educators from different institutions in Florida to learn new approaches and design activities that could be used by all, especially in the field. Time for a Change After 10 or more years of delivering material in lectures, I was getting a little bored teaching in the same old ways. Enticed by a workshop at the annual Ecological Society meeting, I learned about Innovative Methods in Large Lecture Courses from two inspiring scientists and educators: Diane Ebert-May and Carol Brewer. That workshop was really life-changing for me! I learned how to foster more interactions with students and among students (Ebert-May et al., 1997). I realized that average attention spans are short, so that after 12– 15 minutes of listening, most students were zoning out. By introducing active learning breaks that broke up the twice-weekly 75-minute classes into three or more sections, the students were engaged and got to talk and/or move around, breathing new energy into the lecture hall. I accepted the challenge and encouragement to transform my lecture courses, but one lecture/day at a time, and over several offerings of each course. their advice with transforming this required course for all Biology majors. For three years I did an experiment with a different topic to see if active learning made a difference. The topics used in this experiment were Energy in Ecosystems (Spring 2006), Biological Communities (Spring 2008), and Adaptation and Natural Selection (Fall 2009). The content was not assumed to be comparable PSB 70 (3) 2024 255 among the topics, but each served as a vehicle for the experiment. I had an ideal set-up for teaching the same material two ways, as half the class went to receive instruction from our science librarian about finding articles in the scientific literature, while the other half attended an Ecology lecture. I taught the same topic twice each time, but in two different ways. engagement results in greater learning, I used the following experimental design. All students in the experiment were to read the same textbook chapter and view the same material in the lecture that I delivered (i.e., the same PowerPoint slides), and each would write an in-class essay (“minute paper”). Students in the Active Learning group would have three in-class active-learning breaks during the lecture, e.g. a “think/pair/share,” making a categorizing grid, concept map making, class modeling, human tableau, etc.—ideas I got from a great resource, my favorite education “cookbook,” Classroom Assessment Techniques by Angelo and Cross (1993). session on each day, and which ones were present in lecture on the other day via the in-class essays they turned in. By using data from relevant questions on a pretest, from material on the topic in the mid-term exam, and then in the final exam, we saw that students who participated in the Active Learning version of the topic learned more and demonstrated this by better performance on the relevant questions on the mid-term exams (X1) than those students taught in the traditional way (Figure 1). There were greater gains for students in the Active lecture than for those in the regular lecture in the mid-term results (QX1 vs. Qpre). This difference did not hold up long term: performance on the final exam questions, QF vs. Qpre, did not differ significantly between those two groups. An interesting side result was that students who attended either type of lecture showed greater gains (by every measure except the mid-term exam) than those who did not attend lecture! I presented these results in a poster at a Gordon conference (organized by Gordon Uno) at Bates College, where it was energizing and inspiring to meet with science educators from all over. I continued to change my lectures in this class, and in others, over the following years. Changes at the University FIU created a STEM Transformation Institute (https://stem.fiu.edu/), in which I was one of a group of founding faculty fellows. We participated in many workshops on teaching and learning, assessment, and different ways of engaging and inspiring students. I learned more about active learning methods, starting with lab activities— presenting students with challenges and some materials, then letting them explore to answer problems. I learned about professors who simply did not lecture in class, rather using the lecture time to have students work together and Figure 1. Summary of outcomes for students attending traditional lecture (vertical striped bars) versus Active Learning lecture (diagonal striped bars) and those who did not attend lecture (empty gray bars). On the x-axis, Final = score on final exam, Pretest – score on Pretest, X1 = score on midterm exam in which the topic was covered, QX1 = score on questions on the topic on the mid-term exam (a specific part of X1), Qpre = score on questions on the topic on the pretest, and QF = score on questions on the topic on the final exam. Total = total score in course. Data are combined for three different topics in three different trials (semesters of the course), so normalized gain makes the re- sults comparable among trials. PSB 70 (3) 2024 256 independently on thinking and problem solving. A Learning Assistant Program was started, and grew, employing undergraduate students who had previously taken a course to help the professor manage group work in larger courses. We also adopted Peer-Led Teaching and Learning (PLTL) in many of the required majors’ courses, where current students attend a weekly session led by a student who has previously taken and done well in the course. This intervention helped students do better than those who did not have PLTL as data from my Ecology courses show (Figure 2). Exam averages were higher for students taking PLTL along with the lecture course than those who did not (78.5 vs. 73.3), and substantially more passed the course as well (78.6% vs. 62.3). PLTL can help students from marginalized groups succeed in STEM majors (Sloane et al., 2021). a Discipline Based Education Research group (DBER) that holds seminars biweekly throughout the semester—a great chance to learn from outside experts and others at FIU, and to interact with faculty in one’s own and other departments. It connected those of us teaching science classes with science and math education colleagues and fostered collaborations, leading to many projects and publications. DBER meetings were enjoyable, and it was great to get to know others across the university who cared about teaching despite more praise for research accomplishments. Flipping Lecture: Fun and Beneficial for Students and Faculty I decided to flip my courses, and this was an exciting time for me and the students (although some pre-med students worried they would not learn enough in my classes). Each class meeting had active learning almost all the time, working in groups with the supervision and help of Learning Assistants (LAs), presenting to others, and using white boards and other means of communication. Students were to prepare for each class by reading the assigned textbook chapter, listening to a couple of short PowerPoint lectures I had pre- recorded, and checking out (reading or listening to) other resources I posted online, and taking a quiz over the textbook chapter contents. We used clickers in class to provide instant feedback on multiple-choice questions, and then had students discuss questions and answer again. I started giving assessments (exams) in class using a two- part system: first, students would take the exam individually and turn in their answer sheets; then with their group they would work through the test and fill out IFAT (Instant Feedback Assessment Test) bubble cards. Each person’s score was the average of the two. Attendance was very good because we always had activities and most of them “counted” as part of the students’ grades. courses over all the years I taught the traditional way (lecture with no LAs) with the flipped course with LAs (taught only in the spring semesters) shows a marked improvement in course completion, passing rate (Figure 3A), and distribution of final course grades (Figure 3B). However, comparing the performance of students in two summer semesters of online Ecology (synchronous), one with and one without LAs, showed no difference (Figure 4); in fact, there were more high achievers without LAs. Figure 2. The difference Peer-Led Teaching and Learning (PLTL) made in Ecology: participation of Ecology stu- dents in PLTL vs. Final course grade earned. PLTL yes = students who attended PLTL sessions; PLTL no = stu- dents who did not attend PLTL. PSB 70 (3) 2024 257 Pre-Adaptation for Remote Teaching When the pandemic struck and we switched to synchronous online teaching via Zoom, this flipped teaching format was easy to adapt, because lectures and quizzes were already online and the students were expected to go through the online materials and take the chapter quizzes before class. On Zoom, groups could work in breakout rooms with each LA visiting a subset of the groups. The groups (or a selected few of them) would then summarize or present to the entire class. financial gain for the university, the College of Arts and Sciences wanted to develop a Biology BA degree fully online. Because I had taught Ecology A Figure 3. Comparisons of the Ecology course taught flipped (with Learning Assistants, LA) versus traditional lecture (No LA). (A) Passing rates: multiple offerings over the years combined by semester, sample sizes for each given in the yellow bars; (B) Grade distributions in the same courses, including drops (DRs), sample sizes as in (A). Figure 4. Comparisons of the online synchronous Ecolo- gy course taught in flipped style with Learning Assistants (LA) versus more traditional lecture style without activi- ties (No LA) over summer term offerings (initial summer class size was 50; the next time it was 97). (A) Pass/fail comparisons; sample sizes for each given in the yellow bars; (B) Grade distributions, including drops (DRs). A B B PSB 70 (3) 2024 258 many times, I volunteered to develop Ecology for this curriculum as asynchronous online. Each topic was covered by short lectures, activities to be done by one student, quizzes on each chapter, and exams that could be taken twice. I developed an online lab, using some SimBio resources and creating one third of the labs myself with help from the teaching assistants (thank you especially to Cleo Pimienta and Andrea Salas Primoli!). This course has become increasingly popular over time, as have other online offerings of required courses, allowing working students and parents of small children to do this on their own schedule. Community Education Along with university activities, I have always been willing to give talks and organize activities for the public by lecturing and holding workshops for plant societies, nature groups, elementary, middle, and high schools. Some examples include the “After School Gardening Gang” with elementary students, project PRIDE (Pine Rocklands in Dade Environments) at West Miami Middle School (teacher Lisette Perez Munoz received a Toyota Tapestry grant), and several projects with the environmental magnet at TERRA Environmental Research Institute. All have helped me to communicate better, learning how to reach students of different abilities at all levels. Working in groups, the students help and teach each other, with more positive results for all. my teaching and students’ learning over time. Most of the changes were gradual (breaking up the lecture with activities), but some were extreme (flipping the lectures in all my courses). This is kind of how evolution proceeds: gradual versus punctuated equilibria. I have always liked teaching and consider it an important part of a professor’s job, even though FIU became more and more research and funding oriented over my decades there. Evolving my teaching by adapting my methods to a changing clientele has helped me retain my interest in and enthusiasm for teaching for over 40 years. REFERENCES Angelo, T. A., and K. P. Cross. 1993). Classroom As- sessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teach- ers, ed 2. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. sworth Publishing. novation in Large Lectures: Teaching for Active Learn- ing. Bioscience 47: 601-607. weedy vetches bearing extrafloral nectaries and weedy ants in California. American Journal of Botany 66: 1016–1020. er. 1988. Phenological studies of shrub and treelet spe- cies in tropical cloud forests of Costa Rica. Journal of Tropical Ecology 4: 323346. Pedicularis from Jalisco, Mexico. Contr. Univ. Mich. Herbarium 11(5): 298-300. terton, K. M. Schmid, and J. R. Wiles. 2021. Peer- Led Team Learning is Associated with an Increased Retention Rate for STEM Majors from Marginalized Groups. Proceedings of the 13th Annual Research Symposium, National Association of Biology Teachers 2021, pp. 1-9. biological field station. Frontiers in Ecology and Evo- lution 17: 102-103. ogy. Wiley, New York. 259 From the PSB Special Issue on Art in the Botanical Sciences Within the past year, the Plant Science Bulletin has published two special issues in the special anthology, Art and the Botanical Sciences: Past, Present, and Future (the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 issues). These issues grew out of our first workshop on botanical art at Botany 2022 in Anchorage, AK, and the collected articles explored many facets of the importance of botanical arts. First steps toward a botanical field guide for the Hell Creek Formation” by Kirk R. Johnson and Marjorie Leggitt as well as “Reconstructing the botanical past: Art and paleobotany” by Edward J. Spagnuolo et al. We hope you enjoy these articles and encourage you explore the past special issues at https://botany. The SciArt Collective Nicolette Sipperly, Stony Brook University • Rosemary Glos, University of Michigan Kasey Pham, University of Florida • Patricia Chan, University of Wisconsin-Madison Ashley Hamersma, University of Florida SPECIAL SECTION Art in the Botanical Sciences: Past, Present, and Future 260 From the PSB Special Issue on Art in the Botanical Sciences Illustrating Cretaceous Park: First Steps Toward a Botanical Field Guide for the Hell Creek Formation By Kirk R. Johnson 1, and Marjorie Leggitt 2 1 National Museum of Natural History, Wash- ington, D.C. 2 Boulder, CO [All renderings and models ©Marjorie Leggitt] ABSTRACT Fossil plants provide unique data that can lead to credible reconstructions of ancient terrestrial landscapes and ecosystems. This paper describes our process as we use art and science to reconstitute the vegetation of the last North American dinosaurs (with apologies to extant birds). Our art-science toolkit includes geology, sedimentology, palynology, precision excavation and censuses of fossil plant sites, accurate tracing of fossil leaves and flowers, comparative analysis with modern plant relatives, articulated reconstruction drawings of fossil material, construction of schematics showing floral architecture and phyllotaxy, application of traditional and not-so- traditional artistic methods, and the completion of botanical image plates. Scientifically accurate plant species portraits are then combined with similarly generated animal reconstructions, and geologically constrained topography and geomorphology to create plausible views of lost worlds. The Dinosaur Renaissance began in the late 1960s with John Ostrom’s discovery of Deinonychus, a wolf-sized predatory dinosaur with claws on both hands and feet, and Bob Bakker’s lively renderings of agile and active dinosaurs. When Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movie debuted in 1993, Ostrom’s dinosaur was labeled Velociraptor and the film portrayed terrifyingly realistic animals. Paleoart had become “pop art,” but there were other problems too. The paleobotanist played by Laura Dern complained that the protagonists needed the opinion of a paleobotanist, and she was right. While the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were largely from the Cretaceous Period, the surrounding vegetation was simply that of modern Hawaii. we were working on actual fossils from the Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota to reconstruct a true Cretaceous Park. The resulting diorama in the Prehistoric Journey exhibition that opened in 1995 at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science included a walk-through forest foliated with more than 24,000 plastic leaves, all of them based on actual fossil leaves (Johnson, 1996; Leggitt and Johnson, 1999). Never had a dinosaur diorama been vegetated with plants that were collected in direct association with the dinosaurs. The ten plant species we reconstructed for this diorama have gone on to be the plant palette for the Late Cretaceous and have been featured in many PSB 70 (3) 2024 261 subsequent paintings, books, cartoons, dioramas, and video games. Continued excavation over the last 30 years has yielded a remarkably diverse Hell Creek flora with more than 300 species (Johnson, 2002) botanical reality to the vegetation that was the base of the food chain that produced Tyrannosaurus rex, the planet’s greatest terrestrial apex predator. We plan to do this by focusing on a suite of the best Hell Creek Formation fossil leaf quarries that we have collected over the last 30 years. These quarries represent different stratigraphic levels on the 100-m-thick formation and different depositional settings including ponds, floodplains, riverbeds, and levees. These quarries were chosen because they have superb preservation, commonly yield complete leaves, and show high plant diversity. Each quarry will yield the data needed to reconstruct a specific time and place from the last 1.5 million years of the Cretaceous. In this article, we demonstrate how we reconstruct a single plant, Cobbania hickeyi, using an example from the “Licking Leaves” site, a pond deposit in Harding County, northwestern South Dakota (Denver Museum of Nature & Science locality 2703). Materials and Methods Leaves and other plant parts are typically buried in clay, mud, or sand in or near rivers and ponds and are preserved as compressions or impressions in claystone, mudstone, or sandstone. Subsequent uplift and erosion create the outcrops that are the source of fossil plants. During fossilization, original leaf organic matter is typically degraded or destroyed, leaving a leaf-shaped void in the rock. This fact is useful because the rock will break along this plane of weakness to yield imprints of both the top and the bottom of the leaf. Park, Alberta, and in southwestern North Dakota, we collected two separate examples of a complete floating aquatic plant with a rosette of leaves that we interpreted to be inflated. Stockey et al. (2007) described this plant, named it Cobbania corrugata, and assigned it to an aquatic clade of the Araceae. In this paper, we reconstruct the closely related species, Cobbania hickeyi (Stockey et al., 2016), which was based on one complete plant and many loose leaves from the Licking Leaves quarry (Figure 1). extremely important throughout the illustration process, and for this plant we relied on our colleagues Ruth Stockey and Gar Rothwell. Reconstructing a three-dimensional plant from a flattened and sediment filled fossil required both mental and physical models. To do this, the artist (M.L.) traced several leaf fossils, “restoring” each in its entirety, and paying close attention to shapes, margin, and venation (Figure 2A). She used the drawings to create and arrange paper and wire leaf models to view the plant from various perspectives. Figure 1. A single leaf Cobbania hickeyi as it was found in the Licking Leaves quarry. The inflated part of the leaf has lifted off to show the interior venation of the leaf. PSB 70 (3) 2024 262 The resulting top-down linear schematic illustrated the plant’s spiral phyllotaxy, proper leaf size, and arrangement (Figure 2B). Using this sketch and referencing live specimens of Pistia corrugata, she fleshed out a detailed rendering of a plant rosette from above showing five leaves and a new leaf bud (Figure 2C). from a top view to a 3/4 view (Figure 2D), and the resulting image portrays the altered shapes and position of leaves in relationship to one another at an oblique angle (Figure 2E). Because the Cobbania leaves were inflated in life, it was useful to create a clay model to understand how they would appear while floating in water (Figure 2F). The clay model provides a physical form that facilitated the drawing of the leaves and petioles, both above and below an imaginary waterline. Shining a light on the clay models allowed the creation of a realistic interpretation on light on form (Figure 2G). The final drawing was transferred to watercolor paper where the artist used a living relative, Limnobium, for color reference to complete the painting (Figure 3). The dinosaurs of the Hell Creek Formation are surely the most illustrated animals of all prehistory. It is our goal to reconstruct the vegetation of their world with precision and beauty, one species at a time (Figure 4). Figure 2. (A) Tracing and restoration of leaf fossil. (B) Linear schematic of spiral phyllotaxy. (C) Delineated render- ing of rosette. (D) Low-angle photo of inked illustration. (E) Pencil sketch of plant in oblique angle perspective. (F) Clay model helps to “see” how light falls on 3D leaves. (G) Value drawing with highlights and shadows to show form. Figure 3. Full-color reconstruction of the Cobbania hickeyi floating rosette. PSB 70 (3) 2024 263 Figure 4. Pencil study for a rendering of a Late Creta- ceous pond environment with rosettes of Cobbania hick- eyi floating in a shallow pond covered with of Brasenia (watershield). REFERENCES Johnson, K. R., 1996, Description of seven common fossil leaf species from the Hell Creek Formation (Late Cretaceous: Upper Maastrichtian), North Da- kota, South Dakota, and Montana. Proceedings of the Denver Museum of Natural History, series 3, v. 3, p. 1-48. Creek and lower Fort Union Formations in the western Dakotas: vegetational response to climate change, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event, and rapid marine transgression. In: J. Hartman, K. R. Johnson, D. J. Nichols (eds). The Hell Creek For- mation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the northern Great Plains: an integrated continental re- cord of the end of the Cretaceous. Spec Pap 361, pp. 329–392. Geological Society of America, Boulder, CO. plants to scientifically-accurate dioramas: the fabri- cation of prehistoric ecosystems. Journal of Natural Science Illustration 3: 3-6. 2007. Cobbania corrugata gen. et comb. nov. (Ara- ceae): a floating aquatic monocot from the Upper Cretaceous of western North America. American Journal of Botany 94: 609–624. son. 2016. Evaluating relationships among floating aquatic monocots: A new species of Cobbania (Ara- ceae) from the Upper Maastrichtian of South Da- kota. International Journal of Plant Sciences 177: 706–725. 264 From the PSB Special Issue on Art in the Botanical Sciences By Edward J. Spagnuolo 1,5 , L. Alejandro Giraldo 1 , Mario Coiro 2,3 , and Susannah Lydon 4 1 Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. 2 Department of Paleontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 3 Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, USA. 4 School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Loughborough, UK. 5 Author for correspondence (email: spagnuolo@psu.edu) ABSTRACT Paleoart is an important tool for paleobotanists when reconstructing fossil plants and ancient ecosystems, and communicating with diverse audiences. Plants are fundamental components of terrestrial ecosystems. Thus, accurately depicting ancient plants in art is crucial for communicating comprehensive knowledge about ancient life. Here, we briefly review the history of paleobotanical art, discuss the challenges when accurately depicting plants in paleoreconstructions, and highlight recent works that reconcile isolated plant organs into scientifically accurate whole- plant and landscape-level reconstructions. Historically, paleoart has included plants as Reconstructing the Botanical Past: Art and Paleobotany background elements in art featuring charismatic vertebrates, resulting in poorly depicted plants and ecosystems. Plant blindness—the phenomenon in which humans are more inclined to detect and appreciate fauna than flora—is a persistent problem for science communicators, botanists, and paleobotanists. Although plant blindness is rampant in 20th-century paleoart, modern paleoart that accurately incorporates and focuses on ancient plants can increase plant visibility in portrayals of the geologic past. KEYWORDS art, fossils, paleoart, paleobotany, plant awareness disparity, plant blindness, plant fossils, scientific reconstructions Art is an important tool for scientists to engage with both scientific and general audiences (Lesen et al., 2016). Paleontological art—or paleoart— has been used to reconstruct extinct organisms and environments for almost 200 years and has influenced many of our assumptions about the past (Davidson, 2008; Stroud, 2008; Witton et al., 2014; Clary et al., 2022b; Manucci and Romano, 2022). Paleoart can also be useful to better understand and advance paleontological paradigms—most famously, the extensive updated paleoart that accompanied the Dinosaur Renaissance of the late 20th century (McDermott, 2020). Paleoart includes drawings and paintings, museum reconstructions and sculptures, as well as documentaries, movies, and even video games; here, we will mostly reference drawings and paintings, the most common form of paleoart. PSB 70 (3) 2024 265 Plants are fundamental for ecosystems and society, supporting biodiversity, terrestrial biomass, ecosystem structure, and as critical food and oxygen sources for humans and other organisms. Unfortunately, general audiences, policymakers, and other scientists are more likely to recognize and appreciate animals compared to plants. This disparity, termed plant blindness (also known as plant awareness disparity in recent years) has been attributed to reduced funding for plant-related projects compared to animal- focused research, as well as a global decrease in plant-centered education, conservation, and recognition (Wandersee and Schussler, 1999; Drea, 2011; Balding and Williams, 2016; Jose et al., 2019; Margulies et al., 2019; Parsley, 2020; Brownlee et al., 2021; Stagg and Dillon, 2022; Stroud et al., 2022; Walton et al., 2023). science” to other fields in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and as a way to teach broader audiences larger scientific concepts such as evolution, mass extinctions, climate change, and biodiversity (Moran et al., 2015). Often, these education and outreach initiatives include, or center on, paleoart (Burns et al., 2003; Clary et al., 2022a; Lipps et al., 2022). Additionally, plant fossils show how environments have responded to climate change, and knowledge of fossil history can be used as a rationale for the direct conservation of plants and ecosystems (e.g., the UNESCO World Heritage Gondwana Rainforests of Australia; Young and McDonald, 1987; Burnham, 2001; Wilson et al., 2011; Ivory et al., 2016; Lézine et al., 2019; Kooyman et al., 2020). Accurately representing fossil plants in paleoart is fundamental for conveying information about life in the past. plants seen as a backdrop or scene-setting, rather than as “central characters” (however, see Benca et al., 2014; Sanders, 2014; Beans, 2022; Benca, 2022). Here, we discuss how plants have been depicted in paleoreconstructions over time within the context of plant blindness. We also consider the challenges facing plant paleoart and present promising trends for the future. BRIEF HISTORY OF PLANT PALEOART Duria antiquior (“A More Ancient Dorset”), painted by Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche in 1830 (Figure 1A), is widely considered the first example of a new genre of art: the reconstruction of life in the past based on scientific evidence (Rudwick, 1992, 2014; Lescaze, 2017). Although largely a marine scene, this first paleoreconstruction included palms and other less easily identifiable vegetation on background landmasses. In the lithograph versions, produced from De la Beche’s work by George Scharf, fern-like and cycad- looking plants are also recognizable (Rudwick, 1992; Sharpe, 2022; Sharpe and Clary, 2022). Duria antiquior began the proliferation of paleoreconstructions as a means of conveying information about life in the deep past to broad, non-scientific audiences from the 1830s onwards (Clary et al., 2022a), and these illustrations frequently incorporated detailed plant reconstructions (Vujaković, 2019; Manucci and Romano, 2022). Christian Hohe’s final lithograph for Georg August Goldfuss’ Petrefacta Germaniae, produced in 1844, is an exquisitely detailed scene from the Coal Measures with a key detailing the plant taxa, demonstrating that Goldfuss expected his audience to be as interested in them as in animal fossils (Rudwick, 1992). everyday lives (Yuval-Naeh, 2019), combined with popular interest in ferns and their allies (Whittingham, 2012), meant that paleoart focusing on Carboniferous plants was widespread in the latter half of the 19th century (Figure 1B). For instance, Carboniferous plants featured in Franz Unger’s Die Urwelt in ihren verschiedenen Bildungsperioden (“The Primeval World in Various Developmental Periods”) published in 1851, with artwork by Josef Kuwasseg, which inspired Edouard Riou’s illustrations for Louis Figuier’s La terre avant le deluge (“The Earth Before the Flood”) in 1863 (Rudwick, 1992; Davidson, 2015; Vujaković, 2019; Collins, 2022). Figure 1. Representative examples of plant paleoart throughout history and modern plant-centered paleoart. (A) Henry De la Beche’s Duria antiquior. Note palms on the middle-right and some less easily identifiable vegetation on the middle-left. (B) Lycophyte, sphenophyte, and pteridosperm taxa from the Carboniferous of the United States depicted in Underwood (1896; artist unknown), in turn based on Dana (1874). (C) Dinosaur-centered reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous of Argentina, with some minor plant elements in the back (Araucaria) and front right (Zamuneria) (artist: Jorge Antonio González, modified from Paulina-Carabajal et al., 2021). (D) Dinosaur-centered reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous of Canada, with more prominent plant elements covering the ground (ferns), background (conifers), and with which the dinosaurs are interacting (angiosperms) (artist: Julius T. Csotonyi, modified from Mallon and Anderson, 2013). (E) Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous of Argentina based on pollen data, which provides a more regional signature. Plants depicted include ferns, palms, and conifers (artist: F. Guillén, modified from Barreda et al., 2012). (F) Paleoenvironmen- tal reconstruction of the mid-Cretaceous of West Antarctica based on pollen, geochemical, sedimentological, and organic biomarker data, providing a more accurate depiction of the landscape. Plants depicted included Cyathea (Cyatheaceae), Podocarpaceae, and Araucariaceae (artist: James McKay, modified from Klages et al., 2020). (G) Fossil material and recon- struction of the Early Cretaceous conifer Krassilovia mongolica and the associated leaf morphotaxon Podozamites harrisii. From left to right: Articulated seed cones, leaves, winged seeds; and reconstruction of a branch of K. mongolica reconciling all of the fossil elements including alternately arranged P. harrisii leafy shoots (artist: Pollyanna von Knorring, modified from Herrera et al., 2020). All images used here are either Public Domain or have full CC-BY 4.0 rights (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). (A) Duria Antiquior [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duria_Antiquior.jpg] by Henry De la Beche, 1830. Pub- lic Domain (B) Carboniferous Pteridophyta [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_Native_Ferns_-_Carbonifer- ous_Pteridophyta.jpg#filelinks] by Lucien Marcus Underwood, 1896. Public Domain. (C) © 2021 Paulina-Carabajal et al., CC-BY-4.0 (Paulina-Carabajal et al., 2021). (D) © 2013 Mallon, Anderson, CC-BY-4.0 (Mallon and Anderson, 2013). (E) © 2012 Barreda et al, CC-BY-4.0 (Barreda et al., 2012). (F) © 2020 Klages et al., CC-BY-4.0 [https://www.nature.com/ articles/s41586-020-2148-5/figures/3] (Klages et al., 2020) (G) © 2020 Herrera et al, CC-BY-4.0 (Herrera et al., 2020). PSB 70 (3) 2024 267 The “Classic era of paleoart” began in the 1890s in the United States with the hugely influential work of Charles R. Knight (Milner, 2012; Witton, 2018). Knight was famously commissioned to create paintings and murals for some of the largest natural history museums in the United States (including the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum). Often collaborating extensively with vertebrate paleontologists, Knight’s murals centered on the charismatic extinct vertebrates at the forefront of paleontological discovery with naturalistic, but often homogenous, vegetation (Vujaković, 2019). However, Knight conducted detailed research on the Gilboa forests of New York and communicated with paleobotanist Winifred Goldring to maximize the paleobotanical accuracy of his plant-centered mural Devonian Forest (on display at the Field Museum; VanAller Hernick, 2003). Meanwhile, in Europe, Czech painter Zdeněk Burian painted lavish reconstructions including flora from Devonian to Quaternary times (Lavas, 2016; Witton, 2018). century pushed plants into the background. Dinosaurs and other charismatic vertebrates were the centerpieces of most paleoart from this time, and plants were rarely given much consideration. Monkey puzzle trees (Araucaria), cycads (Cycadales), Williamsonia (Bennettitales), palms (Arecaceae), and tree ferns (e.g., Cyatheales)—a very small fraction of the known fossil floral diversity—made up the majority of paleoartistic reconstructions of Mesozoic vegetation. The majority of known Mesozoic seed plants were rarely featured in dinosaur habitats and museum reconstructions of the time (Philippe et al., 2009; Sanisidro and Barrón, 2016; Herrera et al., 2020). Dinosaurs were often reconstructed standing on dry, lifeless earth with a handful of nondescript monkey puzzle trees in the distance, a plant-blind art style coined by Kirk Johnson as “monkey puzzles and parking lots” (Johnson and Troll, 2007; Figure 1C). The rise of the Internet and digital art at the end of the 20th century enabled a paleoart community to develop and thrive online (Witton, 2018). Although tetrapod-centered approaches continued to dominate paleoart at the start of the 21st century (Figure 1D), some artists deliberately flipped this orthodoxy, such as Robert Nicholls in his reconstruction of the early Cretaceous Antarctic Peninsula (McKie, 2011), and influential practitioners such as Witton (2018) have advocated for far greater consideration of plants by paleoartists (Figure 1E–G). CHALLENGES TO PLANT PALEOART AND THE POTENTIAL FOR SPECULATION The fundamental challenge in paleobotany and plant paleoart is creating whole-organism reconstructions (Martine et al., 2019) given the fragmentary nature of the plant fossil record (Spicer and Thomas, 1986). The shedding and differential preservation of various plant organs— including leaves, wood, cones, flowers, spores or pollen, as well as fruits and seeds—throughout the plant life cycle result in a multitude of disarticulated fossils produced by the same plant (Dilcher, 1974; Kvaček, 2008; Wilf, 2008a; Manchester et al., 2014; Cleal et al., 2021), and whole-plant preservation is exceedingly rare (e.g., Boucher et al., 2003; Zamaloa et al., 2006). Additionally, these isolated fossil organs are often named as separate species (or even genera), which can be confusing for non-experts and paleoartists. For example, a single Carboniferous lycopsid tree could be the source of at least six separate fossil species if found in isolation (Spicer and Thomas, 1986). Similarly, the use of morphotaxa—species or genera representing a certain morphology rather than a biological unit—can be confusing for paleoartists (Figure 1G). For example, the wood genus Araucarioxylon and the leaf genus Brachyphyllum were produced by multiple conifer groups (Philippe et al., 2009; Philippe, 2011) but are often reconstructed as Araucaria, fueling their overuse in paleoart. PSB 70 (3) 2024 268 Although leaves are the most abundant plant macrofossils, leaf morphology can be highly variable and plastic, even on leaves of the same plant; most paleobotanists today use caution when taxonomically identifying isolated fossil leaves (Dilcher, 1974; Doyle, 2007; Wilf, 2008a; Spagnuolo et al., 2022). During the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous angiosperm leaves from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic were inaccurately assigned to extant genera and families, largely due to superficial similarities. This has led many paleoartists, especially during the 20th century, to include genera that were likely not present (such as Quercus, Populus, Acer, and Salix) in late Cretaceous and early Paleogene landscape reconstructions. Although reproductive organs— such as fruits, seeds, flowers, and cones—are the basis for most modern fossil plant taxonomy and identification, they are often more delicate and produced at much lower abundances than leaves (Gastaldo, 1992; Cleal et al., 2021). paleoartists must also consider the scale at which they are working. Compressed leaves have been shown to mostly represent a snapshot of local vegetation, with low levels of non-local influences (Burnham, 1994, 1997; Wing and DiMichele, 1995; Cleal et al., 2021). Conversely, pollen and spore data can represent regional vegetation from many habitats within a larger region (Behrensmeyer et al., 2000; Birks et al., 2016). When combined, these data can be used to accurately depict local (e.g., beside a pond) to regional (basin-level) vegetation (Figure 1E and F; Opluštil et al., 2014; Costamagna et al., 2018; Barreda et al., 2020; Wilf et al., 2022). When depicting ancient landscapes, paleoartists should also consult with scientists from other geological disciplines (e.g., sedimentologists) to understand the paleo-topography of the region and how that would influence the distribution of past vegetation. evidence, illustrations often require a well- developed organismal concept, often based on comparative morphology or nearest living relative approaches (Witmer, 1995; Witton, 2018; Martine et al., 2019). The nature of the plant fossil record and the difficulties associated with reconstructing whole plants (Bateman and Hilton, 2009) imply a certain degree of speculation regarding the reconstruction of most plant fossils. Although the practice of representing “known unknowns” has become an important part of vertebrate paleoart (Conway et al., 2013; Nieuwland, 2020), paleoartists seem to be more cautious with plant reconstructions. accessibility to botanical and paleobotanical knowledge, as well as limited input from scientists. Since the late 19th century, paleoart has been driven by commissions, most often by vertebrate paleontologists, not paleobotanists. Scientists must provide artists with more paleobotanical information when possible; however, this can be a challenge because plants and animals require different environmental settings to fossilize and often are not found in the same rocks (Behrensmeyer et al., 2000). Navigating the jargon- rich botanical and paleobotanical literature can be incredibly difficult for non-experts, especially given the decrease in botanical education in general curricula over time (Drea, 2011; Stroud et al., 2022). Although botanical illustration is a well-established field with a rich history spanning centuries (Ben-Ari, 1999; Swann and Pye, 2019; Bienvenue and Chare, 2022), paleoartists rarely come from a formal background in botanical illustration (Sutton, 2019; Dart and Coiro, 2022; von Knorring and Coiro, 2022) and instead have more varied professional stories (Orr, 2019). The expansion of paleoart-focused education in traditional botanical illustration curricula might provide a way forward to better integrate these two fields. THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT FOR PLANT PALEOART Over the last 20 years, scientists have made massive advancements in understanding plant evolution and ancient ecosystems due to the PSB 70 (3) 2024 269 advent of molecular data, mass digitization of natural history collections, and new imaging and statistical methods (Donoghue and Doyle, 2000; Bebber et al., 2010; Amborella Genome Project, 2013; Page et al., 2015; Coiro et al., 2019; Leebens- Mack et al., 2019; Bakker et al., 2020; Hedrick et al., 2020; Romero et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2023). Plant paleoart has also made significant strides in accurately reconstructing ancient plants and paleo-landscapes (see art in Phillips and DiMichele, 1992; DiMichele et al., 2007; Benca et al., 2014; Hetherington et al., 2016; McElwain et al., 2021; Beans, 2022; Benca, 2022). Fossil discoveries worldwide have yielded additional fossil plants with connected organs, allowing for more accurate whole-plant artistic reconstructions (art in Sun et al., 1998, 2002; Hermsen et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2010; Opluštil et al., 2014; Gomez et al., 2015; Bodnar and Escapa, 2016; Rothwell et al., 2022). Extinct plant lineages, which often lack whole- organismal concepts, are being reconstructed and properly included in landscapes (Philippe et al., 2009; Barreda et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2012a; Herrera et al., 2020). Cretaceous charcoalified flowers, and their incredibly detailed artistic reconstructions by Pollyanna von Knorring and others, have provided an unexpected window into early angiosperm evolution (Crepet et al., 2004; Schönenberger, 2005; Crepet, 2008; Takahashi et al., 2008; Friis et al., 2011). Fossil Lagerstätten, amber deposits, and insect damage found on fossil plants have been shown to document plant-insect interactions, including pollination, herbivory and palynivory, insect mining and galling, and insect- plant mimicry (Wilf and Labandeira, 1999; Wilf, 2008b; see art in Wang et al., 2012b, 2014; Bao et al., 2019; Correia et al., 2020; Cariglino et al., 2021; Tihelka et al., 2021; Xiao et al., 2021; Prevec et al., 2022). ancient ecosystems in modern paleoart. The Ancient Colorado and Ancient Denvers murals and related museum reconstructions accurately reconstruct the history of the Denver Basin based on decades of detailed stratigraphic, paleontological, and paleobotanical research and collaboration with artists and sculptors (commissioned by Kirk Johnson and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and brought to life by artists Jan Vriesen, Donna Braginetz, and Gary Staab; Johnson and Raynolds, 2006; Johnson and Stucky, 2006). These murals reconstruct ancient environments from specific fossil localities, instead of broad summaries of entire time periods that tend to depict plants and animals in the same reconstruction that did not actually coexist (common in 20th-century paleoart). Some of the exceptional plant-centered artwork of Smithsonian scientific illustrator Mary Parish includes the floristic turnover of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse and the vegetation of the latest Cretaceous (Montañez, 2016; Sutton, 2019). The murals of Jay Matternes expertly recreated the ecosystems of North America throughout the Cenozoic, detailing the diversification of modern mammal lineages and the rise of grasslands (Carrano and Johnson, 2019). By assembling detailed geochemical, stratigraphic, and palynological data, Klages et al. (2020) together with artist James McKay illustrated the once- diverse late Cretaceous polar forests of Antarctica (Figure 1F). Even traditional vertebrate-centered paleoart is often more conscious of the plant constituents than similar art 20 years ago (Figure 1D). In recent documentaries, video games (e.g., Saurian, Urvogel Games), and comic books, the vegetation is carefully considered to reflect the fossil record of the time period and region (Ehret, 2019; Parker, 2021; Clements et al., 2022; Wings et al., 2023). paleoartists, the Extinct Plant Paleoart Database (Jud, 2020) collects examples of published paleoart in an accessible and continuously updated format. The database currently includes 177 references to plant paleoart, as well as a separate list of plant paleoartists. Although the issue of paywalls associated with scientific journals still hinders full accessibility to paleoartists, this represents an important first step to increase visibility of available resources. We hope that these recent scientific and artistic advancements encourage paleobotanists to continue collaborating with artists in their research and engagement to reduce PSB 70 (3) 2024 270 plant blindness and inspire future generations of paleobiologists to study extinct plants and animals. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS E.J.S. and L.A.G. thank Peter Wilf for in-depth discussions on this topic as well as Cassandra N. Nuñez Sanchez, Rebecca Horwitt, Linda Musser, and the Pennsylvania State University Libraries. E.J.S. and L.A.G. are grateful for the fruitful discussions in the Pennsylvania State University Paleobiology Seminar and Paleobotany course on these topics. M.C. thanks Nathan Jud, Rebecca Dart, Ida Kalsta, Julianne Kiely, and Dolev Fabrikant for discussions on the topic. S.L. thanks Chris Manias and the Popularizing Palaeontology collective for an invaluable forum to discuss this topic. We are also grateful for thoughtful feedback and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. 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