December 2012 Desktop Calendar

A gaggle of geese. A pandemonium of parrots. How about a mash of mosses to fill your screen this December?

After making these desktop calendars for the last year I think that it has been a fun experiment, but I am not sure if I will continue them for 2013. So, if anyone out there has actually been downloading them and would like me to continue, please drop me a message in the comments section. Otherwise I may try my hand at a different project next year. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Gender and Academic Publishing

Are female researchers well represented as authors of publications in your academic discipline? Ever wonder about the gender differences across different academic fields? A group of scientists asked that question using a data set of 1.8 million scholarly publications from 1665 to 2011 that are archived in the online digital database JSTOR.

The results of their research are not yet published, but you can check out the data using two different interactive graphics. They display the percentage of publications that have women authors, women first authors, and women last authors. They also sort the time-spans into different groups and allow you to narrow down to particular fields or sub-fields.

Basically the interactive graphics are amazing! You can check out two different versions of the graphics at the links below. 

The Chronicle of Higher Education - Women as Academic Authors, 1665-2010

Gender Browser at eigenFACTOR.org - Ranking and Mapping Scientific Knowledge

And why might you ask am I talking about this study on a bryology blog? If you look under Ecology and Evolutionary Biology there are 18.5% female authors, but the subfield of Bryology is much higher than this average at 30.1%. This could be a bit of a numbers game. Bryology has many fewer authors than other more popular fields with only 571 authors included in this study, but still the percentage is quite higher. I am happy to say that a number of my publications are archived in this database and may have contributed to these higher values for the field of bryology.

If you are at all interested in female representation in academic research I would highly recommend checking out the links above. They cover a wide range of fields from biology to education to law to philosophy. Additionally, I enjoyed the news story covering the background behind the publication in this Chronicle of Higher Education article.

Overall I think that it is great documentation of the increase in the involvement of women across academic disciplines over the years. How well are women represented in your favorite specialty field?

Thanks to Dr. Tobias Landberg for sending me the link to this article!

Berry Go Round #56

The newest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Seeds Aside.  There are some fun plant posts in the line up that you should definitely check out.

I especially like the post about the new fern genus named for Lady Gaga! I think that it is an interesting way to get taxonomy, systematics, and ferns in the news and on the general public's radar. There is an interview with one of the researchers, Dr. Kathleen Pryer, on the Duke University website and an article in the New York Times about the research.

For more about blog carnivals and my posts about the earlier editions of Berry Go Round, click here.

November 2012 Desktop Calendar

I was hiking in Hubbard Park in Meriden, CT this past weekend and came across this Polytrichum piliferum. It was growing on some rock at the top of the outcrop near Castle Craig. I thought that the calyptra looked especially fuzzy and luminous in the sunshine. Most likely these sporophytes will over-winter at this spear stage and will complete their development by forming capsules in the spring.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Science for Students - Matching Dollars

Want to help teachers in low income communities bring great science to students? 

Consider donating to the plant focused projects at the link below. 

Use the match code SCIENCE when you donate and your dollars will be doubled. 

Thanks!

Moss Plants Donation Page

New Moss Gardening Book

A new book about moss gardening is out! The Secret Lives of Mosses: A Comprehensive Guide for Gardeners by Stephanie Stuber. The book is available in a variety of digital formats and in paperback. Stephanie recently finished her Master's degree in Public Garden Leadership at Cornell University and is now working as a Curatorial Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts.

Overall I think that is is a good book for people interested in integrating mosses into their home garden and learning more about moss biology. She covers the science, culturing, identification, curation, and interpretation of mosses. Stephanie does a nice job introducing readers to the life cycle and a variety of features that are useful for moss identification. Her habit images are vibrant and helpful, however, the photos of microscopic features are not the best quality and the details are difficult to see. The book includes descriptions of 12 common taxa with pronunciations for each genus, which is nice for folks new to moss scientific names. In the section on culturing, Stephanie highlights a variety of ecological components to think about when planting mosses, including light, moisture, and substrate, as well as more instructional topics such as transplanting, companion plants, and maintenance. The sections on curation and interpretation are more helpful for those working at a public garden rather than the at-home gardener, but it is a nice glimpse behind the scenes of a working botanical garden.

It is apparent that Stephanie is well read and knowledgeable about mosses, but I wish that the text would have included more citations to point the reader to the books she read to gain this expertise. She does cite a study that "...documented that beds of moss over soil provide favorable condition(s) for tree growth in the forest and that the removal of them adversely affects the succession of trees (Thieret 1956)." My general knowledge also is that mosses can serve as a moist nursery for seed germination, but having a scientific study that actually demonstrates and supports this idea is even better. I had not heard of Thieret before and will definitely check out his paper to see the details of the study.

A word of caution, the digital editions of this book are reader program specific. I bought a PDF of the book and missed the note that it will only open in the program Adobe Digital Editions. This file will not open in either Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat Professional. I know that digital formats for books are becoming more and more common, but I am suspect of the longevity of files that only open in one specialized program. I plan on studying mosses for a long time and I would like to be able to read and refer to Stephanie's book for the next 50 years. I am pretty sure that computers will continue to be able to access regular PDF files, but will this specific Adobe Digital Edition program still be around so that I can open up this program-specific file? I would have really liked the option to purchase a regular PDF so that the longevity of my access would be more likely. Maybe I will just buy the paperbook version too. I am pretty sure I will still be able to open and read a hard copy years into the future. 

DonorsChoose Science Blogger Challenge

This is my first year competing in the Science Blogger Challenge. The challenge: Compete against other science bloggers to raise money for science supplies for students.

At DonorsChoose.org, teachers request donations for supplies to implement a particular project in their classroom. Then people like you or I make donations of a little or a lot to fund their supplies and make the project happen. Crowd-sourcing in action! 

There are hundreds of great projects to choose from on the site. I am especially excited about the projects that use plants! They range from science experiments that examine plant pigments to starting a garden to make basic observations about how plants grow. I think that plants are a great way to get students excited and interested in science. Botanical education is lacking in many schools and most people think of plants as only the green background where animals live. Instead of knowing that they are unique, diverse, and dynamic organisms in their own right. Connecting students to the natural world through plants is a great way to increase their thinking about and hopefully care for our planet. 

To this end, I have setup a page with a list of projects that Moss Plants and More is sponsoring. Check out the projects on the page and if you find one that resonates with you make a donation! I started the ball rolling with a small donation to each project on my page. Even if you don't make a donation please spread the word via your favorite technology or social media. The contest runs now through Nov 5th. The website for my page is http://www.donorschoose.org/moss-plants-science-donation-page 


My fellow Field of Science Bloggers, we are currently in 8th place. I bet that we can move up in the ranking and raise some money to put awesome science projects into classrooms! Anyone else interested in joining in?

Moss Plants Donation Page

October 2012 Desktop Calendar

The calendar for October is a blend of several different moss species occupying the crevice in a stone. The one in the center is Bryum argenteum, the silver sidewalk moss. As the common name suggests, this moss is regularly found growing in urban areas in between sidewalk tiles. 

I think that the color is really great, but now that I think of it I am not sure how it produces that color. Deposits in the cell walls? Papillae? Are they covered in hairs? Many questions with no answers. Maybe if I have time tomorrow I will look it up. Otherwise it is some great plant beauty to appreciate even without the scientific explanation.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Plants Are Cool, Too!

Check out the second episode of the botanical series Plants Are Cool, Too! In this episode, they find preserved leaves from trees that grew 15 million years ago. My guess is that there were mosses growing on those trees. I wonder if any of them were preserved too? It would be amazing to get ancient moss DNA or just to see what some of the mosses looked like. Unfortunately mosses do not fossilize as well as other plants, so finding some in these deposits would be amazing too!

Check out the video below and spread it around.

Sept 2012 Desktop Calendar

This is leaf of Physcomitrium pyriforme or P. eurystomum. I am not sure which species. It was a preliminary photo that we took for some leaf cell measurements that we will be making this semester. 

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Cool New Cryo SEM

The electron microscopy facility that I work in here at UConn just got a new piece of equipment over the summer and I have some images from it to show off. 

The laboratory now has a cryo-stage for the scanning electron microscope! But let's take a step back in case this type of microscopy is new to you. Basically a scanning electron microscope (SEM) shoots electrons at a sample that is placed in a chamber under high vacuum. The electrons bounce off the sample and enable you to detect an image of the surface that is at a much higher magnification than you can see with a light microscope. The light (dissecting) microscope that I have in the lab magnifies 50-250X, whereas the SEM can magnify up to 200,000X! That is pretty awesome in and of itself, but the cryo-stage adds a whole other level to this equipment. Typically the samples that you look at have to be completely dry before placing them into the vacuum. This is a big issue for biological samples, which can be full of water. There are a number of ways to get rid of the water, but these processes often change the shape of the structures. For some studies this is not a major issue, but for other studies scientists are really trying to see what the plants or animals look like when they are hydrated as they would be when alive. 

Cryo-stage to the rescue! With this equipment a sample can be flash frozen in liquid nitrogen with all of the water in place and then placed into the microscope on the chilled cryo-stage. Then the sample can be viewed with the tissues fully hydrated.

I was out of town when they used some of my moss samples for a test run, so I didn't get to see the equipment in action, but here are some of the images that were taken.

This is a leafy gametophyte stem with a cluster of antheridia at the apex. We are looking down at the top of the stem and there is a second leafy gametophyte lying on its side in the background. The leaves are fully expanded and in an arrangement that you would see when hydrated. If they were dry they would be all folded and curled up on themselves.

Here is the cluster of antheridia and hairs at higher magnification. 

And at an even higher magnification. The hairs located in the antheridia clusters in the Funariaceae are characterized by having a large apical cell, which we can see here is fully hydrated. The filaments covering the hairs are probably fungs or bacteria. These mosses were grown in the laboratory but not in sterile conditions.

Some of the leaves were removed from the gametophyte to make for easier viewing. This image shows the inside of the leaf cells. The outline of the cell walls are visible and it is super cool that we can see the water filling each of the cells.

Congratulations to Dr. Cantino and colleagues on their successful National Science Foundation research grant that funded this new piece of equipment.

Moss Tumbleweeds

I just saw this article about mosses living on glaciers in Iceland and the animals living inside them in the New York Times. These balls of moss (glacier mice) are unattached to the ground and can move around the glacier like tumbleweeds. I knew that mosses grow in extreme habitats and even live in Antarctica, but I had not heard about this type of moss growth form before. Pretty cool, moss tumbleweeds!

Coulson, S. and Midgley, N. 2012. The role of glacier mice in the invertebrate colonisation of glacial surfaces: the moss balls of the Falljökull, Iceland. Polar Biology

Glacier Mosses - Fig. 4 from Coulson and Midgley 2012

Other names for these glacier mice are moss balls and rolling moss. This growth form is advantageous for growing on substrates that are unstable like the surface of a glacier or sand dune. 

For some more reading on this type of moss growth form - 

Shacklette, Hansford T. 1966. Unattached Moss Polsters on Amchitka Island, Alaska. The Bryologist 69: 346-352.

Moss Identification Success

Introducing Jaffueliobryum wrightii! Finally I finished up my moss identifications from my field trip to Missouri and Kansas back in March. This is why I don't do much collecting. My collections tend to sit around for quite a while before identifying them makes it to the top of my list of things to do. And unless I have time for identifying them the mosses are best left growing in the wild. 

So Jaffueliobryum wrightii is in the moss family Grimmiaceae. A telling feature is that the leaves have long, white awns at the tips. Thus, I jumped directly to the Grimmiaceae for my identifying. The genus Jaffueliobryum is usually found on calcareous rocks. This population was growing on sandstone. It doesn't really have a common name, but the genus was named for Félix Jafuell, a clergyman who collected plants in South America. There are only 3 species in North America. One only in Mexico and the other two are widely distributed across the western United States. So once I identified it to Jaffueliobryum there were only two species to choose from. The other species, Jaffueliobryum raui, has keeled leaves (the same idea as the keel on a boat, they look folded or have a ridge down the center), which can be easily seen after making a leaf cross-section. Since this sample did not have keeled leaves, it was Jaffueliobryum wrightii.

It was a really fun plant to identify and I'm glad I got the chance to spend some time with it under the microscope. Now off to the herbarium this sample goes.  

    

Identification and species information in this post is from the Bryophyte Flora of North America.  

Mosses produce Scents that Attract

Photo: Erin Shortlidge, Portland State University

I am a little behind in posting about the moss research that came out in the journal Nature a couple of weeks ago. Researchers found that a moss with separate sexes produce volatile compounds (scents) that can attract microinvertebrates, which in turn increases sexual reproduction.

Todd N. Rosenstiel, Erin E. Shortlidge, Andrea N. Melnychenko, James F. Pankow, & Sarah M. Eppley. Sex-specific volatile compounds influence microarthropod-mediated fertilization of moss. Nature. doi: 10.1038/nature11330

 

For some additional science news coverage of the research check out these articles below.

Science News - I really like this article. The journalist did a nice job of contacting other science experts, some of whom I know, to comment on the research.

New York Times - Pretty brief article, but I was glad to see they covered it. 

News Release from Portland State University - All the details and contacts. Also the title is super catchy.

This research connects to and builds on an earlier study that demonstrated that microarthropods increase fertilization rates in mosses. Now there is good evidence that the mosses are attracting the microarthropods to assist in sperm movement

Cronberg, N., R. Natcheva, and K. Hedlund. 2006. Microarthropods Mediate Sperm Transfer in Mosses Science 313: 1255. 

This research is really changing our thoughts on how we think about sexual reproduction in mosses. Animals help to move the sperm around. The plants produce scents to attract them. And even if they do dry out some sperm can survive desiccation (study below).

Shortlidge, E. E., Rosenstiel, T. N. and Eppley, S. M. 2012. Tolerance to environmental desiccation in moss sperm. New Phytologist 194: 741–750.

Overall I think it is really interesting research to read and think about. 

August 2012 Desktop Calendar

The summer has been in full swing here with science meetings, summer research projects, and manuscripts almost submitted. I have also been gearing up for a large vacation to France. This is the first big one that I have had since I visited Malaysia and Indonesia in 2010. I think that a big vacation needs to be on my calendar every too years.

Speaking of calendars, I dropped the ball on the calendar for July, but here is the August calendar. Ready to go a day in advance! If your first thought was that this is not a moss then you would be correct. The mosses decided to take a August vacation too! Instead the underside of a fern frond from my trip to Malaysia has taken its place. I hope that you have a great vacation month. Take some time to enjoy nature and recharge. Cheers!

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop > Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

A Sporophyte Gone Wild

What happens when a moss sporophyte's calyptra does not detach properly? Really odd development! I came across this sporophyte in one of my Funaria hygrometrica cultures recently.

Calyptra Recap: The calyptra is a small cap of gametophyte tissue that covers the moss sporophyte apex during its development. It is necessary for proper capsule and spore formation in moss sporophytes. Studying the calyptra-sporophyte interaction was the focus of my dissertation research. (You can read more about my main findings here. The calyptra has a cuticle. - The calyptra cuticle develops early relative to the sporophyte cuticle.)

So, this really odd development. It looks like the calyptra did not detach from the rest of the leafy gametophyte properly. Usually there is a line of dehiscence at the bottom that allows the calyptra to separate as a distinct cap. In this specimen the calyptra appears to have split open down the side with the sporophyte continuing to grow. As usual, sporophytes without their calyptra on top do not develop a capsule at all and instead produce an obconic-shaped sporophyte.

On this sporophyte, the apical region and seta meristem both appear to have turned brown and died. Also, there is a funny little projection of tissue sticking off the right side of the thickened stalk. (There is a zoomed-in photo below.) I don't think that I have ever seen anything that looks like this on a sporophyte before!

What is it? Is it branching? Maybe. Is it the beginning of a leaf? Probably not. It would be really cool to section it and see what the internal anatomy looks like. Does it have  central strand tissue going out into it? It looks pretty small so probably not. I wonder if I saved this sample in the lab after taking some photos of it so that I can process it for some anatomical study. Either way, I think that it is some pretty cool morphology to think about!

 

On the Left: An close-up of the sporophyte breaking through the side of the not detached-calyptra. On the right: An up-close view of the tissue projecting from the sporophyte.

Conducting Cells in Mosses

I got an email a while back asking about the leptom and hadrom in mosses (sometimes both of these terms are spelled with an added -e at the end). Admittedly I had not heard these two terms before, but I was pretty sure that they referred to the hydroids (water conducting cells) and leptoids (photoshythate/sugar conducting cells) in mosses. Yes, some bryophytes do have specialized cells for conducting either water or sugars through their plant body, however, the walls of these cells are not strengthened by the compound lignin, so they are not termed xylem and phloem.

I headed to my handy reference shelf to look up the definitions of these two terms and here is what I found about the water conducting cells of mosses.

The hadrom is a term for all the of hydroids together in a structure. In mosses hydroid cells are present in the peristomate mosses (those with teeth around the mouth of the capsule) which includes the Bryopsida, the crown group of mosses, and the Polytrichopsida, the hairy-capped mosses. Hydroids are lacking in some of the earliest diverging lineages: including Sphagnaceae, Andreaeaceae, and Andreaobryaceae.
(Paragraph Updated 16 April 2014:  An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that hydroids are only present in the Bryopsida. However, in Ligrone et al 2000 they state that hydroids are present in the Bryidae. This older name for the group includes both the Bryopsida and the Polytrichopsida and thus has been updated in the paragraph above.)

The leptom (consisting of leptoids) is unique in mosses to the Dawsoniidae and Polytrichidae (the group of mosses that includes Polytrichum, the hairy capped mosses). Other groups of mosses have cells that could be termed 'conducting parenchyma cells', but they are not as specialized as leptoids. 

These terms (leptom and hadrom) were introduced by the German botanist Haberlandt in 1879, which is probably why I hadn't heard of them before.

If you are interested in reading more, this paper has a very thorough and readable discussion of water conducting cells in bryophytes, which I consulted for the above information on hydroids and leptoids.

R Ligrone, J G Duckett, and K S Renzaglia. 2000. Conducting tissues and phyletic relationships of bryophytes. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 355: 795–813. 

To give you a visual of these conducting cells, I remembered that I came across some during the course of my dissertation research. Below is a transverse section through the midrib of a gametophyte leaf of Funaria hygrometrica.

The cells with the thickest walls in the middle-center are stereids, which help to support the leaves. Directly above them are two cells that have a 'blown out' appearance. These cells do not have any cytoplasmic contents and have a very thin wall between them. I would interpret these cells as hydroids. Above and slightly to the right of the hydroids is a large cell with intact cellular contents and a large number of pores in one of the cell walls. Thus I think that this is a food conducting cell or conducting parenchyma cell. 

I have blown up the image and added some letters to help orient you to the larger image above. (Key: stereid = s, hydroid = h, food conducting cell = fcc)

It has been a while since I have looked at and interpreted electron micrographs. Well maybe not so long ago. I did a lot of that for my dissertation but the interpretation stage seems like, and was a couple of years ago. Interpreting this micrograph was super fun and tells me that I need to get back to the electron microscopy lab and generate some more images and data to interpret and think about!

Moss Meetings

Last week I was down in New York at two meetings focusing on Mosses. Yes I go to scientific conferences where everyone is studying bryophytes. Pretty nerdy, I know, but it is actually really fun to hang out with scientists who all share similar interests and to learn about the newest research coming out of laboratories from around the world. 

If you are interested in checking out the talks that were given you can download the brochure with all of the abstracts for each talk given at the meeting. (Abstracts program here) They are basically summaries of the questions asked and major findings of each presentation given at the meeting. They are not nearly as in-depth as listening to the presentation in person, but do give an overview of the topics we covered. 

And here we all are posing outside one of the research buildings at the New York Botanical Garden where the meeting was held.

June 2012 Desktop Calendar

This is an image pulled from my archives. A flashback from 2008. Shown here are some mosses growing in a raked rock garden at a temple in Japan. 

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop > Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Mosses at Trout Brook Valley

I led a moss walk at the end of April at Trout Brook Valley, which is part of the Aspetuck Land Trust in southwestern Connecticut. Unfortunately we had a pretty dry April and the mosses were a little crispy. However, we did locate some that we lush and moist on this drippy rock wall. 

Here we are checking out some mosses growing on a rock. 

Hand-lenses in action!

Thanks to everyone who attended the walk and to Heather Williams Walklet for sending these photos.

The Map of Life. Mapping mosses next?

Have you heard about the Map of Life? They just released their first demo version of the mapping program. The program integrates data on species distributions from a number of sources, such as, point data from collection records, local inventories, and regional checklists. You can either look up a particular species and see where it lives or choose a location in the world and see a list of the species that occur there.   

Thus far they have included Birds, Freshwater fishes, Reptiles, Amphibians, and Mammals. I have suggested to one of my fellow UConn alums, Adam Wilson, who is working on the project, that mosses be added to the mapping list next. Mosses are listed in the Global Biodiversity Inventory Facility (Gbif), so the data is available to add them to this project, but I am guessing that I will have to wait a while until mosses are included. What group would you like to see added to the mapping next? 

Check out the Map of Life program here

Below is an example of the maps that are produced. They use Google Maps and can show multiple layers of distribution data from different sources. The maps are fully interactive and allow you to zoom in to a particular area of interest. I think that this is going to be a really great resource for scientists and amateur naturalists. Imagine going on travels or a collecting trip and being able to pull up a list of all the species in your area, and also a map of previous collection sites so that you can hunt for organisms. (This does assume that you have a fancy phone with web capabilities for the field and that you are not somewhere too remote for a signal.) However, I think that this would be a useful tool prior to heading into the field or for planning a collecting trip.

As an example, this is the distribution map from the smooth earthsnake that I posted about last week.

Some additional information

 - An article from Popular Science talking about the Map of Life.

 - An article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution about the project.

Spore Dispersal by Snakes

I tend to avoid snakes in life in general, but this snake is having a super cool interaction with a moss. If you look closely, it appears that this smooth earthsnake is covered in moss spores!

Close-up of the snake's head.

Close-up of the bright green spores coming out of the moss capsule. 

What do you think? I think that they look like spores on the snake. How long will they stick or how far can the snake go without them falling off? Easy to guess, hard to measure.  Probably a little ways, maybe further depending on how quickly they dry and the cover of plants the snake is crawling through. I think that spore dispersal by animals is a very interesting phenomenon and is under documented in the literature. Have a favorite spore dispersing creature or photos you would like to share?

Thanks to Tobias Landberg, a postdoctoral researcher at Murray State University in Kentucky, for taking and sending me these photos.

Moss Sperm Surviving Desiccation

When I think about moss reproduction, I usually think about the fact that mosses have flagellated sperm that require water to swim to the female archegonium that holds the egg. Researchers at Portland State University have been thinking about sperm survival when desiccated. I think that this is a really interesting question. Imagine that it rains and a moss sperm begins its journey swimming toward and egg. What happens if mid-travel the water dries up and the sperm is stranded? Can the sperm cell survive and resume its journey when it is wet again? 

In this study, the effects of desiccation on sperm cells were examined in three moss species.

Shortlidge, E. E., Rosenstiel, T. N. and Eppley, S. M. 2012. Tolerance to environmental desiccation in moss sperm. New Phytologist 194: 741–750.

They found that a fraction of the sperm were able to survive desiccation (e.g., Ceratodon purpureus, on average 17% survived) and the desiccation tolerance did not vary significantly among species. These results indicate the possibility of a sperm bank existing on the landscape. I have heard about a seed bank and a spore bank, but had not thought about a sperm bank before. I think that this is a pretty cool idea and as the authors mention has significant implications for understanding moss mating systems. That is just one finding from this paper. There is a lot more about desiccation tolerance, the effect of sucrose on sperm survival, and sperm variation. I highly recommend checking out this paper if you are interested in learning more. I think that it is good science and a well-written research article. Kudos to the authors. 

May 2012 Desktop Calendar

Well my hopes for April, when I said I was going to make some time for blog posting, were not realized. Not a single post. Except for the calendar. May will hopefully be better, thought starting off with a calendar post on day 11 is not the best start.

I have decided to blame the lack of April posts on an ongoing case of poison ivy and the delay in the calendar on graduation last weekend. May productivity here I come!

Below, on the calendar, is an unidentified Grimmiaceae from my collecting trip to Kansas and Missouri in March. This little tuft is going to remind me to get things done and to identify him/her by the end of the month. Maybe blog posting on monthly goals is good motivation?

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop > Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

April 2012 Desktop Calendar

Below is an image of Physcomitrium hookerii from the collecting trip I made to Missouri and Kansas a couple of weeks back. I have some additional photos from my travels to post up. Maybe April will have a little more space for blog posting.

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop > Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Naming Species After Scientists?

My former labmate Dr. Juan Carlos Villarreal recently described a new species of hornworts from Columbia.

Villarreal A., Juan Carlos; Campos S., Laura Victoria; Uribe-M., Jaime; Goffinet, Bernard. 2012. Parallel Evolution of Endospory within Hornworts: Nothoceros renzagliensis (Dendrocerotaceae), sp. nov. Systematic Botany 37: 31-37.

Hornworts are a separate lineage of bryophytes that are named for the morphology of the sporophytes. They open by two vertical slits splitting the sporangium into two halves starting at the apex. To the right is an image of several elongated sporophytes sticking out of the frilly gametophyte thallus below. The tallest sporophyte is splitting at the top. However, this is not the new species, but a plant that grew in one of the other cultures that I was growing in the laboratory. 

The new species, Nothoceros renzagliensis is named after Dr. Karen S. Renzaglia, who is a professor at Southern Illinois University. Her research focuses on early land plant anatomy, morphology, and systematics. Juan Carlos completed his master's thesis studying hornworts in her laboratory.

I think that it is fabulous that Juan Carlos named this plant after his former advisor. She is a great scientist who has contributed significantly to the field of bryology. I am completely in favor of naming species in dedication to scientists who have contributed significantly to the study of a particular group of organisms. 

The only time I have been involved in naming a species was for the fern ally Isoetes tennesseensis. This species is endemic to Tennessee, hence the name.

What do you think? Should the specific epithets of scientific names contain information about the region where the organism is found or some other salient morphological feature? Or do you like the idea of naming plants or animals in tribute to great scientists?

March 2012 Desktop Calendar

This is the moss Anacamptodon splachnoides. I just love the sound of that name! You can read more about this species in two earlier posts (Post #1 here & Post #2 here). 

With snow on the ground here in Connecticut hopefully this image will help me last until the green has arrived this spring.
 

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.  

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop > Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

Any issues or suggestions please let me know. These calendars are an experiment in-progress.

Did Mosses Ruin the Planet?

The mosses crept out of the ocean, covering the bare rocks on our desolate planet over 400 million years ago. They sped up the chemical weathering of the rocks and decreased atmospheric carbon dioxide. These nefarious changes triggered glaciation events and a mass marine extinction! Muahahaha...... (yes mosses have an evil laugh) and that is how mosses conquered the land.

A couple of weeks ago, research was published examining the above scenario. The researchers carried out an experiment where they examined the ability of the moss Physcomitrella patens to weather rocks. One of the thoughts was that since mosses do not have true roots they might not alter substrates, such as rocks, in a similar manner. However, they found that the mosses secreted several different organic acids, just like vascular plants. Thus they have the ability to break down and weather rocks. This secretion of organic acids by mosses was not something I had heard about before. Their experiment only examined weathering with and without mosses. But when colonizing land the mosses were not alone. They would have been accompanied by fungi too. The researchers anticipate that the mosses in conjunction with fungal symbionts may even have greater weathering abilities!

Overall I think that it is a really interesting study connecting the colonization of land by mosses to historic patterns of climate change. It shows just how powerful and important plants are for life on our planet! 

Timothy M. Lenton, Michael Crouch, Martin Johnson, Nuno Pires, and Liam Dolan. 2012. First plants cooled the Ordovician. Nature Geoscience 5:86–89.

This post was inspired by a friend who sent me a link to this sarcastic and funny article about this research. I take mild offense to the author calling the mosses names, but otherwise I enjoyed the piece. Thanks Emily!

A Desktop Calendar Experiment

I change the background image on my computer once a month and I really like having a calendar on my computer desktop, since I don't have a wall calendar in the office. For the past several years I have been using the desktop calendars from Chocolate and Zucchini, a food blog that I follow. Unfortunately, she is no longer making the images with calendars. Thus I was left with a dilemma. I need to find a new place to get my desktop calendars. I didn't find any that I really wanted to look at for a month, so I decided to make my own. I have a lot of bryophyte images that I wouldn't mind looking at for a month and here is the result. 

If you are interested in downloading this desktop calendar follow the instructions below. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will loose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.  

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop; Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

I hope that the image comes through with enough resolution and that I positioned the calendar well so that it doesn't get cut off. Any issues or suggestions please let me know. This is totally an experiment and we shall see how it goes.

And I almost forgot the bryological information. These are leafy gametophytes of the moss Funaria hygrometrica (cord moss) that I grew in the laboratory. It is a population from Connecticut that I used for my PhD research.