Happy Taxonomist Day!

As today a Taxonomists appreciation Day, i would like to use this occasion to give an orbituary to my personal scientific Hero - Dr. Alexy Chernovsky, whose 112 Birthday was just this tuesday. Alexy Chernovsky was Russian hydrobilogist and Diptera taxonomist, working mainly with non-biting midges (Diptera, Chironomidae). He was born in 15 of March 1904 in Samara, Russian Empire. In 1928 he graduated from Petrograd (Now St. Petersburg) State University with major in Hydrobilogy. Next 16 years of his live he spent working on his Opus Magnus - key to Chironomids of Soviet Union. He was traveling through the Siberia, Fennoscandia and Southern Ukraine collecting countless midges, and then sorting them long nights within the shimmering circles of the gas lamps light. He only produce several avaiulable taxa names, but his key becomes a pricles cornerstone for Chironomid taxonomist and hydrobiologist- not only in former Soviet Union but all over the world. He only managed to write first volume of the key - "Identification of larvae of the midge family Tendipedidae (junior synonym of Chironomidae)", which was published post-mortem in 1949. He was working on the second volume- about adults- during the harshest part of the WW2 east-front campaing in 1941-1942, in the St Petersburg, under siege. He has died 11th January 1942, month asfter he finished Introduction to the key's first volume. according to what i heard, he was working with midges till the very end, in the cold St Petersburg, during the coldest, hungriest and most horrible winter of the siege. He never gave up on what he was doing, because he believed it was important. Hovewer, personally I think, he never stop doing taxonomy, even in the hardest of times, because taxonomy is fun, and it helping to cope with bleak and harsh reality.

Chernovsky's photo, taken in mid 1930th.

I saw some of his super slides with Chironomid larvae, when visiting Zoological Institute in St Petersburg, and while watching midges he prepared over 70 years ago, i started feeling how his passion about what he was doing, is reaching me...

So i guess the take-home message from here, is - taxonomy is fun, its helping us to cope with whatever going in our lives and world around, but it is also important, so we HAVE TO keep doing it.

Happy Taxonomist Appreciation Day to everyone!( Go hug yourself, or persuade your buddies to buy you a bier!)

P.S. Here is my old paper about Chernovsky, with some photos, unfortunately it is in Ukrainian

Why phylogeny and fossils are matters (as a story of one paper)

Finally, after five years of hard work by Gunnar Kvifte and me, its finally here- our paper  on fossil frog - biting midges (Diptera, Corethrellidae) and species level phylogeny of the family is out!

We have described two new species of the small cute midges from 36 million years old Ukrainian amber from Rovno, and build a quantitative phylogeny using Bayesian a-posteriori analysis. So what the big deal? Why some small fossil midges matters? Well, Gunnar promised to write a detailed guest blog about that, and i am living it to him. I will just give a hint: frog-biting midges are biting frogs... and drinking their blood, while doing so Corethrellidae are transmitting frogs blood parasites - trypanosoms. Trypanosoms, midges and frogs are forming a host-vector parasite system, not to different from lets say humans-Anopheles mosquitoes-malaria plasmodium, but, unlike humans, frogs and Corethrellidae are very diverse, so we can sample co-evolution of hosts, vectors and parasites in delightful diversity. If we would understand co-evolution of this system, it might help us to fight many of human vector diseases, and maybe even tackle emerging diseases...
So i am leaving floor to Gunnar now, and looking forward to his entry...

Here is one of the described corethrellides by the way...

Gardens of Alcatraz (or "Interfaces" going to West Coast)

Each winter San Francisco hosts unique event, that gathering more than 20 000 of Earth scientist in the broadest sense of the word - from vulcanologist to palaeontologist, from biodiversity specialist to atmospheric scientists.

Behold! AGU Fall meeting 2015 poster hall, last day, some 30 minutes before the closure.

st meeting of environmental scientist in the world, which makes it incredible crucible of  ideas and projects which we are most certainly indebted with half of all great ideas in geosciences :D. So of course we go there this year - aren't our ideas great after all! "We" that's basically Amaia, Paul, Tanja, Karlie (AKA Dr Karlie McDonald). We spent quite some useful time networking, presenting and just roaming around at the AGU meeting itself but scientific virtues of such meeting is a separate topic, for a post of its own (which i obviously will write...one day).

Leaving the pier 39 (my phone has apparently evil mind of its own, so it has created this bizarre panorama).

We are all pretty happy as for group of people who are going to the actual (albeit retired) prison!

Here i want to tell a little bit about the "Interfaces"day off in San Francisco - particularly about our trip to National Park "Alcatraz",
When one hear "Alcatraz", one may think "Rock, al Capone, Birdman, crazy marines and Sir Sean Connery", but those are not things/people i am going to talk about.
What has stroked me the most when I landed on the Rock - its gardens...no Gardens!...of Alcatraz. The seemingly lifeless piece of stone in the middle of San Francisco bay, up close appears to be a blossoming paradise and one of the coolest bird sanctuary i ever saw!

 San Francisco skyline from the ferry

 Approaching the Rock...

 Layers of history: naval fort-military prison-FBI prison- free Indian land - National Park (and all within 150 years!)

I love ferns. Ferns loves West Coast Climate!

Some actual Alcatraz prison.

 More skyline - i just love it!

 Gardens - bushes are full of hummingbirds!

 Black phoebe (Sayornis nigricans)

  Two blossoming Agave americana in front of Golden Gate bridge

 Latest (up to my visit) census of birds of Alcatraz

Some of very nice and friendly Heermann's gulls (Larus heermanni) near the pier 39- up to me the most beautifullarge Larid ever!

With 29 species of birds (in the middle of December! ) and hundreds species of indegeous and introduced plants (mostly from the Cape phytogeographical region) Alcatraz is offering much more to explore than just its rich history. Although, gardens of Alcatraz are actually a product of its rich history- they were created from hard work and love of the prisons employees, their families, and also inmates, who were trying to make the Rock slightly more livable, (I am personally spent most of my time on the island staring at the Anna's hummingbird males, which are just stunning!). What is the take-home message? Well -obviously - never leave your binocular at home, and yeah, if you are at the San Francisco, go visit Gardens of Alcatraz!
There's still much to tell about ours West Coast scientific(ish) adventures.
 So, to be continued...

Oh, and bonus (cant help but place it hear): snowy Faroe Islands shot from board of my flight Berlin-Chicago, on the way to San Francisco (Janus and Birna - góðan morgun down there!)

Power of interdisciplinarity - bringing the ideas from freshwater ecology to challenge questions of modern marine biology

Power of serendipity and chance are immense in science. I am not speaking now about Alexandr Fleming forgetting about petri dish at the work bench for a week and getting penicillin as a result... It is rather about the power of occasional meeting, unexpected networking or conversation, which leading to the beautiful ideas appearing, prolific cooperation are starting, and unlikely discoveries are coming into light. It was totally like that for mine cooperation with incredible people from  the Marine Biodiversity Research Group from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

Building of PML...

... and lovely moor-pond in its garden.

Early May 2014, when i just had started my current position, and was really new to the field of bioturbation (i.e. all mechanical activity which animals and plants performing in the aquatic and terrestrial sediments. You can find out more about in from excellent review by Kristensen et al., (2012)), my supervisor, Dr Jörg Lewandowski, suggested me to attend his "favorite small conference" - "Nereis Park: world of bioturbation" - largest international gathering of people who obsessed with different creatures digging burrows in the marine and freshwater moods (bioturbation is of course much more than just burrow digging - this processes are actually contribute immensely in persistence of marine and freshwater food webs, ecosystem health, and even climate!).

 Group foto from the 4th Nereis Park Conference, Plymouth, July 2014

Nereis usb stick. Best conference goody bag ever! Only in PML.

Yep, largest gathering of bioturbation experts.

Nevertheless, during the conference i done a lot of networking, and met some incredible people like incredibly energetic and innovative researchers from the Marine Biodiversity group of PML - Dr Steve Widdicombe and Dr Ana Queiros. They both are doing work on the very cutting edge of the modern marine biology, mainly in the field of ocean acidification and other effects of the global climate change on marine ecosystems. I with my  freshwater background was stunned with scopes and scale of work done in PML, and by other marine researcher from all over the world, me and my supervisor were the only freshwater scientist in the presentation room. Talk of my supervisor was met with great enthusiasm, as apparently, we in freshwater (and in our working group in particular) science having lots of ideas very useful for marine community. What was surprising for me, hoverer, is that my own talk also have been met with considerable enthusiasm and feedback from audience. Apparently, ideas i was presenting were relevant for all those cool marine biologist too!

In fact i even got a best student talk award (to my shock) - not because of the quality of my science probably, but rather because of the novelty of my ideas to community.

Just as I said - Plymouth is charming!

I love Plymouth Hoe!

Building  atop of the hill, with a flagpole,is a British Marine Biological Association (MBA) - what a spot to place a marine research institution!

Anyway - i was charmed by Plymouth and excited by work of people from PML, so while i was looking at the green moors of Devon, which inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his "Hound of the Baskervilles", from the window of the bus taking me to the Heathrow, somewhere deep in my mind i start thinking about working with this people, in this lovely city...

...year and a half (and lots of planning) later i come back to the Plymouth, as a part of my scondments in UK, in frames of  EU Interfaces project, armed with flurometers, fluorescent tracers and lots of enthusiasm and expectations. Ana, Steve and me have designed an experiment which, if succeed, will taught us more about the role of  bioturbators in the marine ecosystems. We have combined more traditional particulate tracers, which widely used in marine biology with liquid chemical tracers, widely applied in studies of the hydrology of the rivers.

Sampling the sediment and animals in the Cawsand ,bay on board the research vessel "Plymouth Quest" with Dr Ana Queiros, October 2015.

So far everything was going just fine....

 ... and then we got a sediment. :)

Kingsand from sea. 

Meeting the MBA research vessel "Sepia".

Hydrological solute tracers are widely used in river ecology and hydrology to trace the flowpathes...

...and particulate tracers (green-ish cover on the sediment in the tanks) are widely used to access the bioturbation intensity. We have tried to combine both methods.

  Our "lab rats" - Amphiura filiformis (and occasional Amphiothrix sp in the upper left corner). All animals were released back to the Cawsand bay after the experiments.

Sieving sediment in the lab.

Excellent climate-controlled mesocosm facility of the PML, where experiments were conducted.

Work in progress: seting-up the microcoms.

We have applied this both sets of methods on the common European deposit -feeder brittle star (Amphiura filiformis). Currently we are working hard  in order to process the data obtained, we do not quite sure what exactly we will learn from 'em, but one is certain- the unexpected encounter from people working in the totally different area of science has lead to the great cooperative project, which opens great possibilities - both for science and to me - to learn more, meet new people and to absorbe ideas, to which i would never be exposed if not because the power of chance!

P.S. Just want to use this occasion to express my sincere gratitude to Ana, Steve, Nick, Gennadi, Joana, Saskia, Sara, crew of the "Plymouth Quest" and all other incredible people of PML who made this cooperation possible!

Dungeons and Dragons (and a little bit of a sea)

  There's a mysterious animal, lurking just a several hours of drive from the lively coast of the Gulf of Trieste, in the dark dungeons of carstic caves, deep under the foggy forests of the Slovenian alps. Tales of this creature are told all around  the large corner of Europe: from Croatia to Austria, flom Slovenia to Italy. This animal was prominently featured in the first complete naturalistic and historical account of  Slovenian lands, Janez Vajkard Valvasor's “The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola (1689)”. Author  was describing olm, the dragon of the depths, mighty and terrifying, unseen by mortal man. Only at spring, when rivers, flowing through the carst were full of melt waters, Olm's offspring - subtle, pale , blind creatures, hardly half a meter long, can be seen washed away from the caves.While olm, and other worm-like dragons are inhabiting only central-european mythology, "olm's offspring" is a totaly different thing. 

  

  This bizarre blind salamanders, sometimes called "man-fish" in English, are totally real, they actually were the first real cavernicolous animals (troglobites) ever described scientificly...

1768, doctor and scientist from Wien - Nicolaus Laurenti- has described an unusually amphibian- a blind, depigmented salamander, with bright red external  gills,which he called Proteus anguinus- european proteus. This description laid a milestone of what has become a science of life under the earth - speleobiology. Since 1768 there's a bunch of books and papers written about biology  and unique adaptations of proteus to his long, slow life in the darkness of the caves, and quite excl lent summary of this literature can be found here: http://amphibiaweb.org/species/4229, and this is not my point to re-tell the stunning history of studies and numerous discoveries on proteus biology.

The point is to share a short illustrated note on my personal small pilgrimage to the "dungeons with dragons"- Postonjnska jama -cave in Slovenia, the most accessible among the all places on Earth where one can see proteus.... (Most of photos of this journey are by  Valentyna Inshyna).

 One of the best thing about being a fellow of Marie Curie research and training project "Interfaces" (you can learn more about project,and what we are doing here ) it is that you are actually able to travel to awesome places, to meet awesome people and all this normally called "business trip".

...Here we go: the best European ecohydrological minds united at the "Interfaces" meeting in Piran, Slovenia

 One of my more recent business trips was to Slovenia, to the mid-term report of the "Interfaces" project. Meeting was held at the Slovenian Marine Biological Station at Piran (which is basically THE Slovenian Adriatic coast). Despite boring name, meeting has inspired number of exciting scientific discussions. And on the top of it all, Piran was generously providing us with enormous amounts of sun, sea, excellent food and gorgeous scenery...

 The most caught and most eaten european marine crayfish- Nephrops norvegicus-common scampi.

Sampling microplancton in the gulf of Trieste.

Sunset ower the gulf of Trieste.

And on the topof that all, Piran is in posession of the only bed-and -breakfest for cats i am aware off. Whats not to love?!

That's what i always believe is the most important institution in every town!

But despite the all gesture of Piran, it was time to head home, and we decided to use the proximity of Slovenian coast to town of Postojna, to actually visit famous Postojna cave, and finally see the proteus in the eyes (which he basically don't have in adult state -what an irony!).

Town of Postojna, view from the train station.

After a short pleasent train ride through the Slovenian mountainous forests we have reached Postojna - an lovely small town. which is a sort of a sacred place for specialist in cave biology all over the world. An it is not only because of proteus.

Postojna cave isahome for Leptodirus hochenwartii - the first specialised cavernicolous insect ever described, the description of L. hochenwartii started scientific explorations of the Postojna cave, over 150 years ago. Discovery of this small beetle is also helped to launch speleobiology inti the mainstream of biological science. Before this beetle all cavernicolous animals - even proteus - were treated rather as curious exceptions. Leptodirus hochenwartii and his "godfather"- austrian entomologist Ferdinand Schmidt, have helped to change the perception. Exciting history of this discovery and its significance for the development of cave's biology can be find in excellent paper by Slavko Polak.

 That's a best picture of famous Leptodirus hochenwartii i personally get during my visit to Postojna, that was a pretty big one, almost 30 cm :D

Slovenian institute of carst in Postojna...

... and first proteus we saw right on the institutes's wall!

Pivka river- the main architect of the Postojna cave

Stares to the cave entrance.

Proteus is mentioned everywhere....

.... and pretty commercialised.

Nowadays, in contrast to Ferdinand Schmidt's time,journey to the caves is not perilous at all and can be made partially by electric train system, partially by foots, and all the way down you are enjoying incredible scenery of the underworld.

More proteus at the entrance to the cave.

I told 'ya - proteus is everywhere!

Nice, large Tipula sp. female - those craneflies are often troglofilous -meaning they like to dwell in cave, but not as a permanent residence. Troglophilles do not process special adaptations to the cavernicolous live, like real cave-dwellers: troglobites.

Cave "landscapes"

Climbing a slippy metall stairs in the Central hall of the cave.

Carbonates in the seepaging water are accumulating for thousands years to create this magnificent forms.

Caves were artificially expanded in order to accommodate the pedestrian passages and the rail.

 Stalagmite "Brilliant" is the symbol of the Postojna cave

 Then, after 2 hours of the excursion in the cave, i finally up to see my first proteus!No the "wild" of course, in order to see an proteus in natural habitat one would require to have a spelaeological training and immense patience. For those who don't have neither of it (i.e. for me) there's another way to see an olm: at the hall of the rail station, which takes the visitors back to the cave exit, there is a tank, about 10000 litters, which accommodating about 20 animals. I was stunned, and, to the surprise of other visitors, bring myself to the knees in order to better see olms, crawling at the bottom of the tank. Mysterious white shadows finally came to me in the flash and blood! I've only got about five minutes with proteus, as our train was about to take us to the exit (duration of the excursion is strictly fixed), which has really upset me, together with the fact that other visitors don't seems to pay much attention to magnificent animals...

Immediately after exiting the cave we headed to the Vivarium - small separate cave, which was first used as biological lab, to study living troglobites, and now is used for displaying of the live representatives of unique fauna of Postojna cave. Vivarium is housing about 20 species of troglobites, including  L.hochenwartii, number of endemic cavernicolous mollusc's, spiders and gammarid shrimps

But the main attraction is, of course, proteus, its scaled-up model (3:1) meeting the visitors near the entrance.

There's a two big tanks in the centre of the room, housing four proteus. I spent about an hour standing there, and watching their slow, reluctant movements. I finally met the dragon from the dungeons, and it was small, and it was subtle and fragile and yet- magnificent. Looking at the slow dance of long, white salamanders in aquarium i was thinking how vulnerable they are. 

Amphibians in general, and Caudata amphibians (newts, salamanders and axolotls) are unlucky bearers of the dubious title "the most endangered class of vertebrates", as over 40% of all amphibians considered to be endangered according to IUCN. With the emergence of the new menace - salamander-killing fungi called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans European newts and salamanders are in grave danger now. Proteus is might be safer than other species - due to its unique habitat, but ultimately, it is up to us to ensure, that dungeons will still have their dragons. Otherwise "the lost frogs (and newts)" list might become a little bit longer...