Dr Anne Jungblut works in the Antarctic on cyanobacteria - a summary of her recent work is taken from the Botany annual report

The Antarctic is characterized by extreme cold and aquatic ecosystems that are dominated by microbes. Cyanobacteria can be found in polar lakes, ponds and streams, and often dominate total ecosystem biomass and productivity by forming benthic mats and films. These organisms are highly tolerant of the harsh polar conditions and overcome nutrient limitation by recycling and scavenging inorganic and organic nutrients.

In the ice-covered lakes of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, cyanobacteria-dominated microbial mats form pinnacle structures that are potential analogues to microbialites found in fossil records. However, despite the importance of cyanobacteria to Antarctic ecosystems, ecology and geo-biology, their diversity, community structure and ecology have been little studied.

The second project is in collaboration with Dr Dale Anderson (Principal Investigator, SETI Institute, CA, USA), Dr Dawn Sumner and Tyler Mackey (US Davis, CA, USA) and Dr Ian Hawes (University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand). The objective is to gain a better understanding of pinnacle formations in cyanobacteria-dominated microbial mats in the perennial ice-covered Lakes Joyce, Vanda and Hoare in the Antarctic Dry
Valley, which will help to interpret ancient microbialite morphology in fossil records. A field event was carried out as part of the US Antarctic Program and supported by research grant from NASA. As part of the fieldwork in the Dry Valleys, pinnacle morphologies were characterized, photosynthesis capabilities examined and cyanobacterial diversity assessed by way of microscopic analysis. Ongoing research in the NHM Botany Department will determine community structure of cyanobacteria within microbialite structures to evaluate the role of cyanobacteria in the formation of microbialite structures, and to study the phylogenetics of cyanobacteria from these unique Antarctic cryo-ecosystems.

Anne wrote a blog on her experiences in the Antarctic - a day-by-day account from the early part of 2011.

Adrian Pont from Entomology spent two weeks on fieldwork in Armenia, 16-29 July. This was the second of three projected visits to Armenia, within the framework of the International Science and Technology Center project “Molecular genetic monitoring of blood-sucking flies (Diptera) as a basis for biological control of vectors of dangerous infectious diseases and precautions against the acts of biological terrorism”

The 2010 fieldwork was in June and the projected 2012 fieldwork will be in May. In this way, the seasonal succession from spring, summer and high summer will have been covered. Samples were collected at 52 sites. 14 of these were during day-trips out from Yerevan to localities previously investigated in 2010, such as Tsakhkadzor at over 2300 m and Lake Kari at nearly 3200 m.  Adrian also spent a morning investigating the polluted River Hrazdan that runs through the centre of Yerevan. The other 40 sites were in the south-east of Armenia.

From 22 to 28 July inclusive, Adrian and his team drove to Meghri on the border with Iran and worked their way slowly back to Yerevan. His companions were a mosquito specialist and two blackfly specialists, and consequently the sites visited were sometimes in villages (for adult mosquitoes in cow sheds) but more usually on the banks of rivers and streams (for blackfly larvae and pupae). As it happened, the riverine habitats were the only ones to produce any Diptera as the open grassland was dry and baked in the summer sun. Day temperatures were in the upper 30s, and it was only at the high-altitude localities that Diptera were more abundant. Early morning and evening were the best times of day to collect Diptera.

Some 1350 specimens were collected and pinned. Over the next few months those on minutien pins will be mounted, and data labels will be printed and attached to all specimens, which will then be sorted to families.  Adrian will continue sorting and identifying the Muscidae, and Michael Ackland will continue his work with the Anthomyiidae.

Among other families, there were few Brachycera and few Acalyptrates. Dolichopodidae were very abundant around the streams, but the season for Empididae was clearly over and very few specimens were found. Sarcophagidae were abundant, but there were few Calliphoridae and only a moderate number of Tachinidae. In the Muscidae, genera such as Thricops, Drymeia, Phaonia, Helina, Mydaea, Coenosia, were also notably scarce or absent. One species (undescribed) of Spilogona was common at Lake Kari. Lispe species and some Limnophora were present at almost all rivers and streams and, as in 2010, Lispe tentaculata was the most abundant and widespread predaceous species of Muscidae and was observed taking adult chironomid midges as prey.

In a paper in 2005 (Pont, A.C., Werner, D., and Kachvoryan, E.A., A preliminary list of the Fanniidae and Muscidae (Diptera) of Armenia,  Zoology in the Middle East, 36: 73-86) Adrian noted that only 20 species of Muscidae had previously been recorded from Armenia. The list now stands at well over 100 species, and grows with each field trip.

This article was taken from Entom news - thanks to Adrian and Esther for content.

Entomology Seminar

Alfred Russel Wallace in the New World: Wallace's US-Canada Lecture Tour of 1886-87

Charles H. Smith

Western Kentucky   University, USA

Wednesday September 14th

Neil Chalmers Science Seminar Room (DC.LG16)

2 pm - 3 pm

Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for events that took place relatively early in his life, in connection with his natural history collecting expeditions to South America and Indonesia in 1848-52 and 1854-62, respectively. But after returning the second time to England he lived another fifty-one yearsto the age of ninety in 1913. This later portion of his life was also filled with activity, and even included another lengthy period of time spent out of the country. Over a ten month period in 1886-87 he toured some ten thousand miles across Canada and the United States, along the way observing, lecturing, botanizing, attending séances, and meeting and befriending a couple of hundred leading figures from American science, politics, and academia, right up to President Grover Cleveland. He left a journal of his tour which is most enlightening, and currently under transcription for publication. In this presentation, focussing on the journal, we attempt a return to this late-Nineteenth Century world.

Contact: Dr Vladimir Blagoderov, Entomology (v.blagoderov@nhm.ac.uk)