We hypothesized that college biology students difficulty interpreting relationships depicted in evolutionary trees (clado-grams) at least partly reflects their responding based on Gestalt grouping principles. Students from non-majors introduc-tory, majors introductory, and upper-level biology classes (N = 310) evaluated two pairs of cladograms after classroominstruction on evolutionary trees. The cladograms in each pair depicted the same evolutionary relationships among threetarget taxa but grouping of those taxa differed due to Gestalt principles. Students were asked which cladogram best repre-sents the specified relationships among the target taxa or whether both cladograms are equally good (the correct answer).As predicted, for all three biology groups, students responses most often were consistent with the Gestalt principles ofgrouping rather than with the pattern of evolutionary relationships (M = 1.28 out of 2; t(309) = 13.55, p ¡ .001). Clearly,biology instruction needs to address the potentially interfering role of Gestalt grouping.

Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and otherwise nonstraight and/or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) have often not felt welcome or represented in the biology community. Additionally, biology can present unique challenges for LGBTQ+ students because of the relationship between certain biology topics and their LGBTQ+ identities. Currently, there is no centralized set of guidelines to make biology learning environments more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals. Rooted in prior literature and the collective expertise of the authors who identify as members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community, we present a set of actionable recommendations to help biologists, biology educators, and biology education researchers be more inclusive of individuals with LGBTQ+ identities. These recommendations are intended to increase awareness of LGBTQ+ identities and spark conversations about transforming biology learning spaces and the broader academic biology community to become more inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals.