Phycological Society of America 2020 meeting cancelled

PSA logo

Well, my summer travel plans just got downsized. Hot on the heels of Chlamy 2020 deadlines extended, the PSA meeting in Providence, Rhode Island is cancelled:

Greetings fellow phycologists,

I think that we can all agree that the greatest strength of our society is the fantastic folk of which it is comprised. We have members from around the planet, at every stage of professional development, all unified by our love of all things algal. Thus, it is with a heavy heart that after consultation with, and on behalf of, the Executive Committee, we have decided to cancel the meeting in Rhode Island this year for several Covid-19 related reasons.

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Billion-year-old green algae

Proterocladus antiquus

Figure 2g from Tang et al. 2020. Proterocladus antiquus. Scale bar 200 μm.

Researchers from Virginia Tech and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have described some billion-year-old fossils that they interpret as green algae. What’s interesting about these fossils, aside from being older than previously known green algal fossils, is that they appear to be fully multicellular, with differentiated cells. This is a valuable find, because it shows that at least one of the many green algal lineages that have independently evolved multicellularity did so relatively early. Sadly, the article, in Nature Ecology & Evolution, is paywalled. The best I can do is link to the article’s page on ResearchGate, which has a read-only version. I requested a full-text through that page, and the lead author sent a pdf promptly.

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A series of fortunate events

Salomé and Merchant 2019 Fig. 1

Figure 1 from Salomé and Merchant 2019. Taxonomic Basis of Chlamydomonas and Volvox. Ehrenberg’s drawings of Chlamydomonas and Volvox cells, published in 1838. Cells that belong to the same species are indicated by Roman numerals in the right panel. I, Gonium pectorale; II, Gonium punctatum; III, Gonium tranquillum; IV, Gonium hyalinum; V, Gonium glaucum; VI, Eudorina elegans; VII, Syncrypta volvox; VIII, Sphaerosira volvox; IX, Synura uvella; X, Chlamidomonas pulvisculus; XI, Uroglena volvox. The species was identified as Chlamidomonas pulvisculus but renamed Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in 1888.

In a new(-ish) article in The Plant Cell, Patrice Salomé and Sabeeha Merchant review the history and utility of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a model organism. The article discusses the advantages of Chlamy as a model organism, the scientific questions it has been used to explore, the history of Chlamy research, the characteristics of the species, the existing resources and databases, and genetic and genomic techniques. It’s a good introduction to Chlamy research in a more easily-digestible form than the massive, three-volume Chlamydomonas Sourcebook.

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Debunked by the Institute for Creation Research

Folks, it’s been fun. I feel like I had a pretty good run as a scientist. I met some amazing people, went to beautiful places, and learned things I never would have imagined (Hodgkinia, WTF?!). With all my frustrations and failures, I’ve never once regretted going back to school and becoming a biologist. But now I need to close the door on all of that and find a new way to make a living.

See, the main project I’ve been working on for the last six years, the one that was supported by a NASA postdoctoral fellowship, and that just came out in Scientific Reports, has been debunked:

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Reminder: tomorrow is the deadline for the Kato Memorial Bioscience Foundation travel fellowship

¥50,000 is ¥50,000! Applications for travel fellowships from the Kato Memorial Bioscience Foundation for the Fifth International Volvox Meeting are due tomorrow. These fellowships are to help non-Japanese students and postdocs travel to Tokyo for the meeting. ¥50,000 is around $500, a pretty good return for an easy application. Answer a few questions, send an email, and your trip could be $500 cheaper:

Applicants are required to submit a pdf file of the completed application form (download here) to Volvox2019 Office (E-mail: volvox2019 (at) gmail.com)

The Royal Society of Biology deadline is also coming up soon (March 1).

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Evil polyps enslave innocent algae using light

Imagine you’re swimming in nice, warm water, happily making your own food without a care in the world (other than zooplankton). You just need to store up enough starch before nightfall to hold you through the night so you can quit swimming, absorb your flagella, and wait for the sun’s return. You see a green light below, and you swim toward it. You can’t help yourself; your phototactic machinery is hardwired to respond.

Next thing you know, you’re captured by a giant, tentacled polyp. You look for a way out, but there is none. You’re stuck there for the rest of your life, forced to work and have the food you produce stolen by your coral overlord. Resigned to your fate, you absorb your flagella and get down to photosynthesizing.

Aihara et al. 2019 Fig. 2A

Figure 2A from Aihara et al. 2019. the coral Echinophyllia aspera and its algal captives under natural light conditions (Scale bar, 1 cm.).

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Convergence part 7: convergence in Volvox

Last year I wrote a series of posts on convergent evolution and misrepresentations of the history of the concept by proponents of intelligent design including Günter Bechly, Lee M. Spetner, Granville Sewell, and others. I didn’t intend for there to be a two-month gap before the final installment (nor am I sure this is the final installment), but here we are.

To quickly recap, I showed in the first three installments that

The Discovery Institute is producing a revisionist history. To hear them tell it, convergence is something that evolutionary biologists have either barely heard of or that they “invented” or “made up” to hide problems with the tree of life. Convergence “destroys the tree of life,” it “contradict[s] the [modern synthesis],” and it is “quite unexpected” to evolutionary biologists. All of that is a big, stinking pile of wrong. In reality, biologists since Darwin, and including Darwin, have always appreciated the importance of convergence, have written thousands of papers about it, and have included it in every evolutionary biology textbook I’m aware of.

I explained why the argument that convergence is evidence against common descent is daft, and I gave a spectacular example of convergent (or parallel) recruitment of life cycle genes in plants and brown algae. I also promised that I would write about convergent evolution in Volvox, which I have so far failed to do.

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Aquatic science orgs oppose changing WOTUS

The Trump administration is expected to announce reductions to the waters protected by the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule in a couple of hours. The change is expected to remove at least some wetlands, ephemeral streams, and headwaters streams from the waters covered by the rule.

According to MSNBC,

Mark Ryan, a lawyer at Ryan & Kuehler PLLC who spent 24 years as a clean water expert and litigator at the EPA, said water systems called headwaters in high regions of the country could lose protections under the new definitions being proposed by the Trump administration.

“I think the mining is going to benefit from this because mines tend to be up in the mountains near headwater systems,” Ryan said.

Miners may no longer need to apply for a permit before pushing waste from operations, such as rubble from mountain-top coal mining in the eastern United States, into some streams.

Howe Brook

Headwater stream in Baxter State Park, Maine.

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