Christos attends 2nd European Congress on Photosynthesis Research
2nd European Congress on Photosynthesis Research
After the success of the first edition, the European Congress for Photosynthesis Research came back in 2024. From June the 25th to the 28th 2024, experts in the field of natural and artificial photosynthesis gathered in the historic city of Padova (Italy), the cradle of the scientific method developed by Galileo, for an exciting second edition of this scientific event.
The conference started on the 24th of June with the ePS Young Session, tailored for PhD candidates and early-career postdocs. This session fostered an informal and interactive setting, encouraging discussions and idea exchanges among young participants from diverse institutes.
The main conference started with the opening talks in the impressive Aula Magna, the most impressive room of Palazzo Bo, where the great Galileo gave his lectures. The conference continued with numerous sessions on structure, acclimation and evolution of the photosynthetic apparatus, photosynthesis in microbes like algae and cyanobacteria, and new perspectives and technologies of photosynthesis like artificial photosynthesis. The attendees had the opportunity to enjoy a serene evening filled with delectable Italian cuisine and fine wine at the conference’s gala dinner. The conference was a huge success, and the participation exceeded the organizers’ expectations.
Dr. Christos Chondrogiannis presented his research on the presence of CAM activity in the ancient group of cycads. He proposed two species as potential candidates for facultative CAM activity. This project carried out in collaboration with Trinity College Botanic Gardens and National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, generated a lot of interest and led to in-depth discussions about the significance of the findings and the prospects of the project. The conference also provided an opportunity to establish future collaborations and rekindle friendships from previous conferences.
by Dr. Christos Chondrogiannis
Plant-Climate Interaction Lab at the iCRAG SUMMIT 2024
iCRAG Summit 2024
On June 25th and 26th, 2024, the iCRAG annual summit was held at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone. Researchers from multiple universities and institutions across Ireland attended, focusing on Geoscience research. Prof. Jennifer McElwain and Dr. Sate Ahmad from the Plant-Climate Interactions Lab, Botany Department, were among the attendees.
The summit featured updates on recent research in Earth System Change, Earth Science and Society, and Earth Resources. The iCRAG Census results were presented, highlighting areas for improvement in equity, diversity, and inclusion. This was followed by training on Education and Public Engagement (EPE) and innovation, covering intellectual property and patents. Dr. Ahmad presented preliminary results on estimating transpiration and evapotranspiration from upflow willow-based treatment systems during a poster session.
Day 2 began with a morning dip in Lough Ree, followed by breakout sessions within and across different research areas. Prof. McElwain, leading the Earth System Change challenge, moderated the discussion around how to best get insights into Ireland’s future climate by analyzing its past climate through the Cenozoic era, using paleoproxies and climate archives. The summit brought together scientists from various disciplines to collaborate towards a better future.
by Dr. Sate Ahmad
Fossil-hunting expedition across France
Fossil-hunting expedition across France
Over the past week (June 21st-28th), the two postgraduate members of the TERRAFORM team, Catarina Barbosa and Antonietta Knetge, travelled to Poitiers, France for fieldwork. Alongside Dr Bernard Gomez and his postgraduate student, Axel Montigny from the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, they visited multiple Mesozoic exposures to collect leaf macrofossils and plant debris. The first quarry visited was in Persac, an Albian-Cenomanian (~ 100.5 ma) paleokarst locality with angiosperm leaves and various fauna such as bivalves, bony fish, crocodyliforms, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and mammals. The group then travelled to the Île d’Oléron to excavate an early Tithonian locality (~149.2 ma), abundant in fossilised conifer wood. The subsequent localities visited offered excellent examples of different types of plant fossil preservation ranging from petrified, and silicified, to plant cuticles preserved in clay. Many of these sites were situated in the La Rochelle/Rochefort area, including the unique Île Madame, only accessible at low tide. The images below show the group on their last night of fieldwork as well as Eucalyptus-like angiosperm leaves from Puy-Puy (Albian-Cenomanian, ~ 100.5 ma) and the fossilised wood from Île d’Oléron.
by Antonietta Knetge
XV. International Palynological Congress (IPC) XI. International Organisation of Palaeobotany Conference (IOPC)
Terraform researchers take part in IPC/IOPC Conference in Prague, Czechia
The emerging field of trait-based paleoecology suffers from the siloing of its practitioners along multiple dimensions including the availability of infrastructure and materials, and structure-specific focus. To promote the development of a more cohesive and collaborative ‘paleo-trait’ network Will Matthaeus and Jenny McElwain led a workshop on behalf of the ERC-TERRAFORM project at IPC/IOPC 2024. Following the recent publication by McElwain et al. (2024, New Phytologist, Tansley Reviews), 28 scientists from around the world and across career stages participated in a collaborative evaluation of the potential for utilizing plant functional traits in the fossil record. Attendees gave positive feedback and new collaborations were established in the discussions that followed.
Members of the TERRAFORM project participated in IPC/IOPC field trips. One trip was made to the Pecínov, a quarry in the late Cretaceous Bohemian Basin, circa 50 km west of Prague. The locality offers a transgressional set of sedimentary bodies that allow clear identification of the paleo-coastal area, moving inland through a salt marsh, swamp, and finally into a freshwater braided river. The Cenomanian flora from Pecínov has been extensively described, with an assemblage consisting of gymnosperm and angiosperm taxa. A PhD student from our team was able to collect plant macrofossil material from this locality for future research and was eager to recount her pleasant experience, meeting senior paleobotanists in the field and listening to their epic (and very-niche) plant-fossil tales of yore.
TERRAFORM’s two PhD students, Antonietta Knetge and Catarina Barbosa, presented their first major conference talk at IPC/IOPC in a session focused on the biotic crises of the Mesozoic. Stepping up the plate immediately after lunch, Catarina refused to let conference attendees take a nap by showing them a cool graph and talking about it a bunch. Her talk on paleoecology and turnover in the T/J boundary of East Greenland featured carefully developed visualizations of community composition through time at South Tancrediakløft. Antonietta then took to the stage to deliver a rousing presentation on diversity and taphonomy, using rarefaction curves to compare that same locality and Astartekløft, historically one of the most important sites for the Greenland T/J. Both talks garnered interest, lots of questions, and collaboration requests. A great success!
European Geoscience Union Meeting 2024
European Geoscience Union General Assembly Vienna 2024
The 5-day conference in Austria’s capital, Vienna, with over 18,000 in attendance, is the meeting that offers an invaluable opportunity for networking and knowledge exchange. Our team of researchers proudly represented the major projects from our laboratory during different sessions and participated in multidisciplinary discussions, talks and poster presentations.
Katie O’Dea presented the poster on the effects of using concrete dust on oats and barley in field conditions as a collaboration between the Terraform project and the project led by researchers at University College Dublin ICRAG.
Christos Chondrogioannis convened the enhanced rock weathering & river alkalinity enhancement for carbon dioxide removal session. The information from the meeting gave insights into the potential of a carbon capture technology, reducing GHG emissions and strived to inform decision-making on how these technologies can help with reaching the climate targets.
William Matthaeus will co-conven the Co-evolution of life biogeodynamics and trait-based paleoecology during deep time tomorrow. This session is designed to foster conversation between experts from diverse fields interested in how life and planetary processes have co-evolved over geological time.
During the peatland management and restoration session, Sate Ahmad presented his talk on small-scale associations between peat properties and microtopography in drained fen and a near-intact fen in Ireland. The presentation showcased the results of the Irish Research Council and ICRAG-funded DIVE2STORE project.
Our former lab member, Richard Nair presented his talk on how water availability controls seasonal shifts in root growth timing, during the soil-plant interactions across landforms: implications for soil functions, ecosystem patterns and services under global change session. During his talk, Richard discussed novel methods to shed light on seasonal and daily patterns of root growth and the driving mechanisms behind them.
by Katie O’Dea
The Plant-Climate Interaction Lab houses a new Nikon stereomicroscope
The Plant-Climate Interaction Lab houses a new Nikon stereomicroscope, supported by iCRAG and ERC-TERRAFORM, configured to create high-resolution maps of complex materials. The system uses a high optical magnification (>300x) single-optic system with a large working distance (>60 mm), a motorized stage and focus. The Discipline of Botany is the first in Ireland to procure Nikon’s Extended Depth of Focus (EDF) software, which allows micron-scale topographic reconstruction, for example, of fossiliferous rocks and leaf surfaces. These outstanding and state-of-the-art capabilities can also be combined with large image scans and modular epifluorescence to create a variety of true-to-scale spatially integrated high-quality datasets for relatively large samples (~70 mm).
Understanding how fossilisation of plants works
A pilot project in experimental taphonomy
Researchers from the TERRAFORM team visited University College Cork in March to carry out a pilot project in experimental taphonomy with collaborator Maria McNamara. Postdoc Will Matthaeus and PhD student Catarina Barbosa are interested in testing hypotheses regarding the effect of certain aspects of the process that plant parts undergo in the transition between life and preservation in the fossil record (i.e., taphonomy). Maria is a leading expert in the interpretation of the fossil record using experimental alteration of biological materials. The group aims to develop robust interpretations of signals from the plant fossil record for use in ecosystem simulations.
New publication!
Functional traits of fossil plants
Led by Prof. McElwain, the ERC-funded TERRAFORM project team recently published a comprehensive review “Functional Traits of Fossil Plants” in the New Phytologist. The review took a unique approach, evaluating which extant plant traits offer the greatest promise for application to fossils through contemporary trait-based ecology. The focus was placed on plant functional traits and measurable properties of fossils that provide insights into the functioning of the plants in past environments.
Taking into consideration the limitations of a trait-based approach in palaeobotany, the team together with collaborators assessed over 30 extant traits in palaeobotany and ranked 26 paleo-functional traits based on taphonomic and methodological criteria that can potentially impact Earth system processes. The Tansley Review offers a new perspective on the study of extinct plants and brings insights into their functioning in the past.
The open-access publication is available online under this link.
Figures from the publication:
Figure 1. The methodological framework used to critically evaluate 30 contemporary plant traits (from Pérez-Harguindeguy et al., 2013) for their potential application to the plant fossil record as paleo-functional traits.
Figure 2. Examples of fossil plant functional traits.
Figure 3. Comparison of paleo-functional trait scores according to different weighting criteria.
"The Birth of the Modern World: Understanding Floral Dynamics during the Mesozoic"
Dr Mario Coiro's seminar visit to School of Natural Sciences
In February, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr Mario Coiro from the University of Vienna when he visited Trinity College Dublin for his School of Natural Sciences’ Research Seminar talk.
Dr Coiro is a leading botanist and paleobiologist with a passion for exploring the intricacies of evolution. With a wide range of skills, including expertise in molecular biology and an in-depth knowledge of cycads, Dr Coiro is dedicated to advancing our understanding of the natural world. In his talk “The Birth of the Modern World: Understanding Floral Dynamics during the Mesozoic”, he walked the audience through the key findings of his research, which tackles some of the most pressing questions surrounding floral group dynamics and evolutionary processes.
After the talk, the customary pizza lunch was held, and the department’s postgrads had the chance to have a more casual chat with Dr Coiro about a variety of topics ranging from cutting-edge research to how much better the weather is in Italy. Dr Coiro also took the time for one-on-one meetings with the TERRAFORM group’s PhD students. “Coming from a trait-based approach, talking to someone coming from a macroevolutionary angle broadened my perspective. Having the opportunity to pick someone’s brain like this is super valuable!” said Catarina Barbosa, a second-year PhD student.
To find out more about Dr Mario Coiro’s research please visit his blog
Figure source: https://mariocoiro.blog/2023/06/27/a-new-view-of-cycads-in-deep-time/
Botany-Zoology Postgraduate Symposium 2024
Botany-Zoology Postgraduate Research Symposium 2024
