bryobureaux

The last day.

2006-12-30T16:12:00.000-08:00

Happy New year all bryobureaux browsers. I have been slack as usual and not posted for a while.
So what's happening?
I am on Chistmas break from work until the 2nd January, so have been relaxing over the holidays.
I mentioned in my last posting that I have a student Melita starting with me in December to work on a molecular project with the liverwort group, Fossombronia. So far we have sequences of all my cultures for ITS (Internal Transcribed Spacer) which is found in the nucleus. Melita will also be generating sequences from the chloroplast regions, rps4 and trnL-F.
I have been playing around with the ITS data to generate phylogenetic trees using PAUP. So far so good. The groups that I have identified as distinct species have been coming out together.
In the new year, hoping to generate SEM pics of the spores from each of the culture populations so will post some images on this blog.
Well off to the mall.
Thanks Laura for your comment. It didn't seem to want to post onto the blog so will try again.

Hot November

2006-11-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/901/1

I lied ........ well I didn't mean to. Meant to post more regularly, but that fell in a heap.
Too tied up with work and home life. Anyway, preparing these days for my summer student this summer for a 9 week stint of working on Fossombronia. My student, Melita will be doing a molecular project to look at the biodiversity and phylogeny of the Australian Fossombronias. Over the last 5 and half years I have been collecting Fossombronias and attempting to get them into axenic culture. This has been quite successful, but I have lost many through growth cabinet breakdown. I have lost cultures either through temp. drop and freezing my plants or rising temps that finish up cooking my plants. Lost over half of my Western Australian collection of Fossombronias last year. Bums!
But I do also have other problems - contamination from fungi or bacteria. Fungus is hard to irradicate but I use streptomycin in my medium for control of the bacteria. It kinda works.
Anyone else out there culturing bryophytes. I know there are not many people putting time and effort into such projects. It is time consuming, but the rewards are worth it, I think.

ohfivenovember

2006-11-05T01:16:00.000-08:00

Finished marking my bryophyte section of Plant Diversity course - mmmm - I don't think the students quite got was I was asking them. Oh well.
So what has been happening in the bryo world of late? Discovered a paper published in 2004 which is a review of hybridization in bryophytes. A very good overview.
Written by Rayna Natcheva and Nils Cronberg in the Canadian Journal of Botany. 2004. Vol.82: 1687-1704.
They make the point that interspecific hybridization among bryophytes has been seriously underestimated. Certainly appears to be relatively more common among mosses than liverworts and there are no records of it occurring at all in hornworts .... well yet anyway!
I also finally got around to downloading my latest edition of The Bryological Times which is a newsletter put out by the International Association of Bryologists which i have been a member of for 25 years this year!
It has a small piece in it by JeriLyn Peck on moss harvesting. She has an interesting website too talking about her research. It is caught my interest as I am keen to know how the moss harvesting industry here in Australia is doing. I am guessing it is occurring unsustainably but no-one that I know is doing any work here in Australia.

http://www.strengthinperspective.com/JPmoss/index.htm

But I believe it can occur sustainably and also have an impact on invasive mosses from Europe which are smothering our native bryos and vascular herbs.
There is a project there.

No, no no, not November

2006-11-01T01:48:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it is November already. the year is almost over and man, I only have a million things yet to do before December.
Finally received a blog comment from a fellow colleague and fellow blogger Laura. Thanks Laura! I finally got around to looking at my hotmail and saw your comment. So it is published now!
One of my readers told me they didn't get the images just the little grey box with the cross through it.
Isn't technology wonderful? Mind you I can see my images.
Are people seeing my images or not though? Send me comments as to whether or not you can see them.

So what is happening in the world of bryophytes?

Its springtime heading for a hot and long summer. Have been culturing hornworts and Fossombronias of late and fingers crossed they will germinate for me.
My images are of the plant in culture (Anthoceros punctatus) and its parent population as it would appear in the wild. It retains its morphology amazingly well under artificial culture.
Promise I will try to post a bit more regularly .........

Red October

2006-10-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

It is the 2nd day of October and the last day of a long weekend in the ACT. My family and I went out west to travel to a small township called Forbes in central NSW. It is famous for being the burial site of one of Australia's bushrangers Ben Hall, who was shot to death by police at the very young age of 27.
Forbes is a lovely town, very neat and tidy but also very picturesque. But man, it was very warm and would be extremely hot in the summertime.
I was hoping to find bryophytes while we were out camping in Conimbla National Park, but it is so dry there was hardly any bryos about at all. We went for a short walk through the bush near our campsite and found fabulous lichen covered rocks with large patches of the moss Campylopus introflexus very much dried, but still alive.
I will post images of both the dried colonies and a still hydrated colony.

bryophytes and insects

2006-09-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

Recently there was discussion on a listserve that I belong to (bryonet) about an article that was published about the role of insects in facilitating fertilisation between male and female bryophytes. The article tested the hypothesis that insects do indeed help in the transfer of sperm from male plants to receptive female plants.
But check out this small video of insects, moss sperm, spore liberation and Collembolas.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/901/1

You will need to go to the end of the article and it has a link to the video.

bryophytes and insects

2006-09-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

Wednesday but whose counting ....

2006-09-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

There are so many projects out there but not enough hours in the day.
Today or was that yesterday I received an email from a botanist down south in Victoria who recently discovered a new population of Treubia and is keeping an eagle eye on it.
He recently came back from observations of the population and let me know that they are sexual and producing babies! I am hoping to have the privilege of attempting to culture this rather beautiful liverwort (are there ugly ones?) from spores under sterile conditions. If an easy thing to do (which I have my doubts about!) that could translate into a possible tool in the armoury for plant conservation.
Then out of the blue we also happened to get a return loan of our Treubia collections - now is that coincidence or is that coincidence?
Treubia has been figuring a lot in phylogenies of late, with the most recent and comprehensive molecular phylogeny of liverworts in the latest volume of the Bryologist.
[Great publication, but so bloody expensive - but hey, it does come from the home of capitalism!]
Laura Forrest etal has included the largest number of liverworts in a molecular phylogeny to date. And one of the stars - Treubia of course. By the way the paper is great too.
Now getting back to projects - how about one on Cuban hornworts. Now that I will leave to the next post.
Google Treubia under images if you would like to see what they look like.
I am hoping to post my own images of this liverwort in a few weeks time. But I have to post an image of something. ummmmm.
How about my Uruguayan Corsinia? Keep reading folks.

Sunday too far

2006-09-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

Another week, and I have been flat out at work as usual doing a million things but not sure that I actually achieved anything of significance. Ah, but I must say that my first labchat at the herbarium as the organiser went off well, though not many staff actually turned up. But for those that did turn up, the discussion about how the labchat should run was quite successful, I think. There was verbal interchange with various points of view put forward, and I think we came to a consensus in the end.
The next labchat is on the 20th Sept. and will be a talk from the director of the Centre, Dr Judy West who will outline her vision for the Centre now that we have re-invented ourselves once again.
And what do I mean by that?
The Centre over the last few years has seen it combine with conservation research and then a bigger merger with sustainable agriculture ...... yeah what does taxonomy and systematics have in common with sustainable agriculture you may ask ......... nothing as far as I can see!
Anyway, finally the powers that be have seen the light and have hived the pure essence of the Centre (Australian National Herbarium and Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research) into one program, Program H.
CSIRO like to divide their divisions into programs which are identified by a letter of the alphabet. Ours is "H".
Anyway, the herbarium is in the process of reducing its numbers with members of the conservation group heading off into a completely different building, and the Centre containing just the taxonomy and systematics research groups and the information and collection groups only.
That will free up a bit of office and lab space too.
Hey, I may not have mentioned anything about bryos in this post, but I will post an image of one of the spectacular bryos I collected in Uruguay .... the whole point of starting this blog.
It is Oxymitra incrassata.
catch ya.

Time flies

2006-09-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

It has been a week since my last ..... post.
Time has flown by and I still haven't reduced the size of my images for posting.
I have finally gotten around to looking at a collection of hornworts sent from Cuba by a young bryologist. So far I have studied the Megaceros and Dendroceros specimens and mounted the spores for later viewing with the SEM. Still have quite a few more to go.
I am also building up my Fossombronia collections in axenic culture for a project for a summer studentship student. The plan is to sequence two more chloroplast genes to help in the resolution of relationships between species of Australian Fossombronias. Heading off down to Victoria to collect Fossombronias and hornworts.
Oh yes, I am also organising the new series of labchats for the Centre each 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month. The first one is tomorrow and it is being thrown open for discussion as to how staff at the Centre would like the labchat to run. The main thing is informal discussions no powerpoint presentations or standing up in front of the group to give a talk. The aim is to try and achieve informal discussions and to create a feeling of trust for people to discuss their research or work or experimental problems, etc.
Will see how it goes I guess. Will keep you informed on the progress.

Monday

2006-08-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

Today was quite busy .... checked the live crypto display that I look after at the front entrance of the Visitors Centre ..... it needs a lot of tender loving care and I'm afraid I ain't got anymore to give! No time! It needs a bit of an overhaul and a change over from a spray system to a drip system. But enough boring display talk, on with bryology.
Spent the afternoon culturing hornworts and a ring-in moss. The moss is the weed Funaria hygrometrica which I grow from spores to demonstrate the protonema stage of mosses following germination for a Plant Diversity class that I deliver 4 lectures in for Botany & Zoology Dept at ANU. I also teach one lab. class which is why I am preparing the moss germination demo.
The other thing that happened today is that I had one student make an enquiry about a project I have put up for the CSIRO Summer Studentship program this year. Yeh! One taker!
I am heading down south in October to collect Fossombronias for culturing to supplement the cultures I already have for the project. "Down south" is the Australian state of Victoria. I am meeting up with well-known Victorian naturalist and photographer Bruce Fuhrer. I will be looking for Fossombronias and of course hornworts from Warrandyte Nat. Park travelling west to the Otways which is a wet temperate rainforest region. I am also hoping to see my first population of Treubia lacunosa which should be fruiting at aroundabout that time. If so, I will bring it back to Canberra for sterile culturing. I don't know if anyone else in the world has cultured it. It is a fussy plant in artificial culture - I have one little shoot in my growth cabinet. It has produced a new branch, so I am hopeful it will continue on.
Oh yeah, I planted up some Riccias that a local collector gave me today. They are the common but beautiful R. cavernosa and R. crystallina. They both have beautiful spores too. I will post two images of those spores. They are r. crystallina. Enough.

Middle of the week

2006-08-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here with a rotten head cold, my eyes are streaming and my nose is stuffed up and my head feels awful .... but hey what is there to complain about?
And what did I do today? Apart from the usual Wednesday morning CPBR morning tea meeting, I had my two Uruguayan liverworts id's confirmed as Corsinia coriandrina and Oxymitra incrassata. Both liverworts I have never seen before in the field and was quite excited when I did find them. The Oxymitra I had originally thought to be a weird Riccia, but after showing the photos I took of it to a colleague, Karen Beckmann at MEL she id it as the Oxymitra. The other thalloid liverwort I had no idea of and sent the image off to another colleague down in Tassie, Prof. Rod Seppelt who id it as Corsinia. Man, two totally new liverworts for me. Both id's were then doubly confirmed by Dr Robb Gradstein, well-known German hepaticologist who specialises in Latin American liverworts.
I am now dying to get my specimens back here in Australia. At present they are in the Botany Dept at the National University of Uruguay in Montevideo waiting to be sent here. I am also dying to get back to Uruguay but a bit later in the year, closer to Spring.
And what happened this afternoon ...... spent all afternoon harvesting Megaceros plants from my cultures for DNA extraction. We are hoping to amplify the trnL-F gene to add to our ITS data. Hoping for better resolution of relationships between my Megaceros taxa and hopefully populations with the same spore patterns wil come together in the same clade. At present my hypothesis is that there are 4 distinct spore patterns in Australian Megaceros.
Keeping my fingers crossed.
Still haven't reduced my images down for posting. I know, no excuses please.

A day in the life ....

2006-08-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

.... of a cryptogam curator. The weekend just gone saw an Open Day for the Herbarium as part of our contribution for the Science Festival. My group in the cryptogam herb. put up a great display of both dried herb. specimens and live cryptos with a theme close to home - urban cryptogams. So we made a point of choosing specs that would be found in peoples own backyards here in Canberra. Luckily for us who live in Canberra, it really is the Bush Capital, with many bush reserves and parks throughout the suburbs. Along with our display, Murray Fagg added a nifty little home made moss garden made from a recycled sink and a $10 reticulated watering system. It contained striking patches of Pyrrhobryum mnioides, Sphagnum cristata, Marchantia berteroana and M. foliacea, Breutelia affinis and a well placed piece of rotting log covered in mosses and liverworts.
So what the heck did I get up to today? Packing away all the bits and pieces of the display of course.
The Open Day was great. There was a great feeling in the herbarium amongst staff, a real positive, passionate and exciting feeling. And that was doubly felt with the great enthusiasm and curiosity from the public who came to visit. Having these Open Days may be a bit of a pain to set up, but man, when interacting with the public it makes it worthwhile by far.
Well done CANB.

STILL LEARNING

2006-08-20T03:41:00.000-07:00

As you can see from my blog post yesterday I did finally work out how to post an image .... now I am on my way! just have to reduce the size of my images now, so wil have to do that in Photoshop which I don't have on my laptop. So again, bear with me, I shall reduce a few images and then continue posting photos from our trip to Uruguay.
Hey, I just checked out Blogger Search to see if there were any other blogs out there using Blogger that dealt with bryophytes and there were! Great.
I will have to get my act together and start posting more seriously.

Montevideo

2006-08-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

One of the first images I took of Montevideo when we arrived this year .... Michelangelo's David. This is one of only three copies in the world and one of them is here in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Uruguay 2006

2006-08-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

During June and July of 2006 my family and I travelled to Uruguay and Argentina to visit both family and friends. This was just my second trip to Uruguay, birthplace of my husband. This time around we decided to travel more widely and see the countryside rather than just staying in the capital, Montevideo. I was also planned to collect bryophytes and take as many images of plants and the countryside as possible. It was a whirlwind trip but we managed to cross the whole of the country from west to east.
I will post images of the trip in this blog, if I can figure out where to find my photos .... man, sometime my Mac is a mystery to me compared to my PC at work.
So please bear with me. Images are coming .......