Plant biologists are, or should be, used to diversity. Trees, algae, annual plants. Gymnosperms, Angiosperms, mosses. Not every question can be answered using  just Arabidopsis as the model and we all like to think that our research may help improve food production by plants other than our primary study objects.  I posted here before about the diversity of plants we use in the lab to answer various research questions, to interest you to at least our own work beyond Arabidopsis. If you’d like to know more, check out Charlotte Gommers’ paper in Plant Cell on two wild Geraniums: http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2017/01/30/tpc.16.00790

Despite this liking for and understanding of the importance of diversity in our study systems, Biology still has major issues with diversity in the population of scientists doing the work, reaching tenured positions and beyond. Plantae has a great podcast, called the Taproot, and this weeks episode is particularly important. Liz Haswell and Ivan Baxter discuss gender discrimination with Gina Baucom and I recommend everyone to listen to it and think about what all we can do to improve diversity.  The podcast can be found here: https://plantae.org/taproot-s2e5-evolving-approaches-herbicide-resistance-in-weeds-and-what-men-can-do-to-fight-gender-discrimination-in-science/