The Bug Mosses - Buxbaumia sp.

This was one of the interesting mosses that we saw on the Bioblitz a couple of weeks ago. It is a member of the genus Buxbaumia and is most likely Buxbaumia aphylla. There are 4 species in this genus that can be found in North America and this is the only species one of the four that has been found in Connecticut. If you are hiking just a little further north in Massachusetts you might run into both B. aphylla and B. minakatae. The way to tell these two apart are by the following sporophyte features, which are mature in the springtime.

Buxbaumia aphylla
- Capsule glossy/shiny
- Capsule with a ridge separating the Upper side from the Lower

Buxbaumia minakatae
- Capsule dull
- No ridge. Upper and Lower sides gradually merge.

The shiny capsule can be better seen on the second photo. It looks pretty dull in the first, but I think that is just the lighting. Both of the photos show the lighter upper side of the capsule that is bordered by a ridge that separates it from the lower side.

The common name for mosses in the genus Buxbaumia is the bug moss. This name refers to the off-kilter (asymmetrical) sporophyte capsule that kind of resembles a bug.

Another fact of note about members of Buxbaumia is that they have a very reduced gametophyte. They never form a leafy plant. Instead they have persistent protonema, which consists of thin filaments that may remind you of algae, if only you could see them. These protonema do produce sex organs (antheridia and archegonia). Add a little water to the mix and a sporophyte is produced via sexual reproduction. Since there is no leafy gametophyte for Buxbaumia the sporophytes appear to be sticking out of the bare soil as you can see in the photo below. Most mosses have a persistent gametophyte that is large and the sporophyte stays attached to it through its life. Since it lacks this feature this makes Buxbaumia a bit of an odd-ball.


If you have ever seen insects displayed in a natural history collection or museum they are mounted on pins stuck through their body and then poked into the bottom of a lined box. That is what I think the Buxbaumia sporophytes resemble. Specifically, they remind me of stink bugs, which one of my former office-mates studied for his dissertation. Keep your eyes peeled for this cool moss the next time you are out walking. They are a nice little find.

Corticolous Mosses at Bioblitz 2009

The Bioblitz a couple of weeks ago went well. I think that we counted about 40 bryophyte species and 40 lichen species in the survey area. We were in both Keney Park in Hartford, CT and in a floodplain area of the Connecticut River. I got some good shots of some pretty cool corticolous mosses. A moss that is corticolous grows on tree bark. Many of them had sporophytes peeking out from amongst the green, as you can see from the photos below.




In the floodplain area that we visited there were tons, I mean tons, of mosquitoes and poison ivy. I have encountered worse mosquitoes before. When I went on a field course to the Bahamas as an undergraduate I was eaten alive by mosquitoes over the two week course. I counted and had hundreds of bites on one leg. However the poison ivy on this Bioblitz excursion was more than I have ever seen before. Knee and hip high patches galore. Vines climbing almost every tree. I often went to bush a branch out of my way only to realize that it was not coming from the tree but from the poison ivy attached to it.

Here is a photo of me hiding from the mosquitoes in my rain jacket. Can you spot all the poison ivy in the background?

The poison ivy is above my head and to the right.

Thanks to Dr. Emmanuël Sérusiaux for taking this photo.

British Bryological Society Publications

I recently became a member of the British Bryological Society. They publish the peer-reviewed scientific journal called the Journal of Bryology. They also have another publication called Field Bryology, which includes a variety of articles. There are articles about new species, moss poems, notes on conservation concerns, book reviews, and much more. You can download some of the articles from this publication at the BBS website.

I think that the Field Bryology's colorful photographs and accessible writing style makes this a great publication for interested amateur bryologists. Their website has a large number of other resources. I would highly recommend checking it out if you are in search of additional bryophyte information on the web. They also list the many field-trips that they have to look at bryophytes across the English countryside. The community appears to be really active and I think that it is great that they get out into the field so much.

Speaking of field trips, we will be out in the field this weekend for the Bioblitz 2009 in Hartford, Connecticut. For more information check out the link at the side bar or drop me an email (jessica.budke@uconn.edu) if you are interesed in joining us. All are welcome.

Berry Go Round #17

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Gravity's Rainbow. Enjoy the latest from the plant blogosphere!

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

Bryology Outdoors

I have decided to add an additional heading to the left side of this blog entitled "Bryology Outdoors". I realized that I know about a number of outdoor field-trips and workshops that focus on bryophytes. A few of them are local here in Connecticut, which I will be attending. Others are further afield, such as the SO BE FREE 15 in New Mexico, which I may want to attend, but may be a little far for my travel budget this year.

Here is a list of the outdoor events that I have posted thus far. If you know of any others to add to the list please let me know.

What: Mysterious Mosses - Moss Walks
When: May 30, 2009 10am-12noon or 1:30-3:30pm
Where: West Redding, Connecticut, New Pond Farm (non-profit environmental education center)
Who: I am leading this program.
Fees: $20 per NPF member, $30 per non-member
More Details: Contact the staff at New Pond Farm (203-938-2117) for reservations or click here for more information on their website.

What: Connecticut Bioblitz - 24 hour biological survey of a Connecticut park with scientists, students and members of the public.
When: June 12 & 13, 2009
Where: Goodwin College (Hartford, Connecticut) on Riverside Drive with parallel public events at Keney Park. We will be looking for wildlife along the Connecticut River corridor south to Wethersfield Cove and throughout the 693 acres of Keney Park and the Matianuck State Preserve.
Who: Sponsored by the Center for Conservation and Biodiversity and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History at the University of Connecticut. My laboratory, headed up by Dr. Goffinet, will be surveying all of the bryophytes during the blitz.
More Details: Check out the Bioblitz website here. If you are interested in joining the bryophyte team for all or part of the bioblitz feel free to drop me an email (jessica.budke@uconn.edu). We would be happy to have additional help with the collecting and identifying. I also have a PDF of a flyer for this event if you are interested in advertising in your area.

What: 34th Annual A. Leroy Andrews Foray, Exploring valleys and bogs of northeastern Connecticut.
When: September 18 - 20, 2009
Where: Woodstock, Connecticut, YMCA Camp Woodstock
Who: Contact person for the foray is Juan Sanchez (jasdarwin2@charter.net). (I will also be attending, probably with other members of my lab.)
More Details: Additional information can be found here at the Goffinet Lab Website.

What: Spring Outing, Botanical Excursion, Foray, Retreat, and Escape into the Environment (SOBEFREE 15)
When: March 23 - 26, 2010
Where: Sacramento Mountains, southern New Mexico
Who: This event is sponsored annually by the Bryo Lab at the University of California Berkeley.
(I probably will not be in attendance as this event is quite a trek from Connecticut.)
More Details: Additional information about this event can be found by linking here to the BryoLab's website.

Back in the Swing of Things

Busyness has kept me away from the blogging in the past couple of weeks. The semester has wrapped up and I will not be teaching over the summer, which is a relief to my schedule. I took a week off to visit my family in Ohio. No mossy stories to report from there, but it was great to have a vacation!

I also heard back about the grants that I applied for back in March. I am thrilled to report that I received all four of the grants! Let me tell you that this was quite a surprise. Grants to fund research in the biological sciences are highly competitive. (For grant applications to the National Science Foundation ~15% of the grants are funded.) Often researchers apply multiple times before receiving funding for their research. Thus I am excited and honored to be awarded the funding from these national and international competitions. It is great to know that others in my field think that my research ideas are exciting and interesting. I am looking forward to a summer filled with research on my mosses that will entail a lot of electron microscopy.

Here is a list of the awards I received and links to the funding agencies.
Stanley Greene Award: International Association of Bryologists (1 of 3 awarded)
Graduate Student Research Award: Botanical Society of America (1 of 13 awarded)
Graduate Student Research Fellowship: American Microscopical Society (1 of 1 awarded)
Henry N. Andrews Endowment Fund: University of Connecticut Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Dept.

Also I will be giving a Moss Walk at New Pond Farm in West Redding Connecticut on Saturday May 30th. Check out their webpage here for more details.

Berry Go Round #16

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Quiche Moraine. Stop by to check out all of the interesting plant related posts from the past month!

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

Moss Poem

I came across this poem in the field journal of the British Bryology Society. I thought that it was appropriate timing to post as May Day is tomorrow. I think that it is a great poem of spring celebration! The warm weather is definitely upon us here in Connecticut. The layout in the original has several words spaced out and hanging out in space. I tried to have blogger space them out. However it kept sliding them back to the right no matter what I tried. Thus the dots (...) that I have added as place holders were not in the original version. I have added them to try to approximate the author's formatting as close as possible.

One more week of classes and then a week of final exams. Once the semester is over I am looking forward to getting outside to take some moss photos to post up and comment about on the blog. Until then enjoy the poetry of spring!


The Tundra Terrarium
(May Day, May Day)

My ............. sings! .................................... heart
These new things:
Pollen flings .............................................. first
Microscopic moss
Telescoping stems
Voluptuous, starburst moss
Little tinker-bell lilies
Spotted fawns
Spotted fawn lilies
Caribou antlers on caribou ferns,
Shed for the gentler season
Innocent inocybe
Cleopatra's Calyptrae
Sophocles' Sporophytes
My seen mycena tips its cap
Mushroom mycelium,
My ceiling
The forest is my floor
Earth Bursts

You! - concrete people!
You who live in the city
Have you no thirst?
This little bug
This pollywog .......................................... hand
This quenching,
Quenched land
Plant a plant that stretches
Up and up for the sun
Plant a plant that turns
Its back to darkness
Yearning for the light:
Spindly-dwindly

Your soul is suffering for lack of light
Come out, where souls take flight!

Hill, Ruth. Feb 2009. Field Bryology. Bulletin of the British Bryological Society. No. 97, P.23.
ruthhill@joiedevivregardens.ca

Website All About Liverworts

I just heard about this new website entitled, "ELPT: Early Land Plants Today - Uniting Taxonomy, Nomenclature, & Geography". It is a web resource devoted to information on liverworts (Marchantiophyta), one of the three groups of bryophytes.

This webite has a really extensive literature list that includes 12,000 references about liverworts. There are also links to a few taxon pages with sketches of the species. Additionally there is an extensive list of liverwort checklists. A checklist has all the species in a particular group of interest, plant or animal, that occur in a specific region or area of the world. The area a particular checklist covers can be as small as a local park or as extensive as an entire country. They are a good resource for discovering what species occur in your neck of the woods.

Mosses Outside My Apartment

I was sitting in the park next to my apartment building a few days ago and took these photos.

What do you think?

1) The mosses grew like this on the fence bar.
2) They jumped up there to get a better look at the river.
3) People have fun arranging mosses in the park.

I vote for #3. I thought that it was pretty fun to think that someone arranged the mosses in a very decorative manner. But I wonder how many people have seen them and thought that they just grow on the fence like that naturally. I have seen mosses growing on a number of man-made items. However these ones have huge chunks of sand sticking to the bottom of each clump, which makes me think that they were relocated.

I will definitely be on the lookout for more moss relocation "art" in town.

Berry Go Round #15

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at A Neotropical Savanna. Stop by to check out all of the fabulous plant related posts!

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

Mosses and the Money

March has been a busy writing month for me. I have written 4 grant proposals to try to get a hold of some money to fund my research. I applied to an internal granting competition through my department and outside grants through the Botanical Society of America, American Microscopical Society, and the International Association of Bryologists. They range in funding amounts from $500-$1500. Think good thoughts for me. I am hoping to be awarded some money to fund my moss research. My backup plan is to start regularly purchasing lottery tickets.

In other money news, the two undergrad students who are working with me, Leah and Melissa, both received awards to fund their research. Melissa was awarded $500 from UConn's Office of Undergraduate Research to fund her calyptra study. (A calyptra is a little cap of gametophytic tissue that covers the top of the moss sporophyte as it develops.) And Leah found out on Friday that she was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) grant through the same office as Melissa's award. The SURF award includes $500 to fund her research and a $3000 stipend to cover living expenses. With the economy being down the competition was even tougher than previous years. I heard that they had over 100 applications and gave out ~30 awards. The competition is open to students from all disciplines across the university, so it is pretty exciting that she got this award! I am looking forward to having more time this summer to help in advising her on her project. She will be using DNA sequence data to examine the relationships between members of the moss genus Micromitrium.

I am hoping that this is a good omen and that I will have just as good of money/funding luck as the undergrad students I am advising! I will keep you all posted on the outcomes.