Large epidermal projections called papillae on the surfaces of the leaves of Syntrichia mosses are visible in this cross-section.
Graduate student Jenna Ekwealor works on DNA extraction from Syntrichia with undergraduate researchers Heloise and Easha.
PI Kirsten Fisher and Graduate Student Jameka Jefferson doing microscopy work.
Bryophyte moss chamber for measuring metabolic costs of recovery from desiccation stress!
Graduate Student Javier Jauregui Lazo looks for microscopic traits to identify and describe mosses. PHOTO: J. Jauregui Lazo
PI Llo Stark in the lab.
Graduate student Jenna Ekwealor tends to live moss cultures in a growth chamber. PHOTO: S. Nosratinia
Stress Tests!
The Stark and Dean-Coe Labs are testing how Syntrichia species respond to desiccation stress using a suite of factors such as rate of drying and duration dry.
Signs of desiccation stress in Syntrichia! Few new shoots are able to sprout from this orange, rapidly-dried (<30 min) set of experimental shoots. PHOTO: L. StarkSlow-drying is a tolerable stress for some species of Syntrichia! Many new shoots grow from these green, slowly-dried (> 1 day to dry) experimental shoots. PHOTO: L. Stark
Ecophysiology of Syntrichia Student Training Week, July 2017
PI Llo Stark giving a moss stress “chalk talk” to graduate and undergraduate students visiting from UC-Berkeley, U of Montana, and St. Mary’s College in Maryland. Experimental techniques were a key focal area to ensure that moss desiccation stress treatments and stress assessments are reproducible across labs.
Graduate and undergraduate students on the Dimensions Team gathered at UNLV’s Stark Lab to refine lab protocols for an upcoming series of ecophysiological experiments involving moss performance & stress metrics.
During lab training, Theresa Clark recorded videos that will demonstrate precise techniques for culturing and stress-testing mosses.
Check back soon for these instructional videos here!
Undergraduate student, Nora Howard worked with post-doc, Josh Greenwood and doctoral student, Caleb Caswell-Levy to refine a critical method for measuring net photosynthesis in small Syntrichia specimens using the “moss chamber”. This specialized infrared gas analyzer (IRGCA) chamber can detect fine changes in CO2 and oxygen produced by the metabolism of a moss “awakening” from desiccation dormancy!
Bryophyte moss chamber for measuring metabolic costs of recovery from desiccation stress!
Infrared gas analyzer (IRGA) used in concert with the moss chamber.
Growing mosses…greenhouse style!
The Bowker Lab (NAU) is culturing common lichens, mosses, and cyanobacteria species from Southwest biocrust! Cultured individuals are grown under the same growth-chamber conditions, but in different combinations of diversity. The cultured biocrust communities were planted in the field at their sites of origin and in foreign sites along an aridity gradient in Utah (reciprocal transplant experiment) to test if increasing diversity at different genetic levels (e.g. species and genotype) can increase resiliency to environmental stress! See Field Work for more pics of field transplant sites!
Biocrust mosses (and black-colored algae) grown in culture plates at the NAU greenhouse under a continue fog regime.Experimental units at the NAU greenhouse used to learn about the biology and ecology of biocrust species.Dried stems of Syntrichia caninervis (left) and Syntrichis ruralis (right) cleaned and fragmented for use in greenhouse experiments.
