Dennis Escolástico, with Kim Damboise and Catherine Boudreault (lichen specialists), spent nearly 2 weeks doing fieldwork in the Hudson's Bay, especifically in Kuujjuarapik and Umiujaq. They were still blocks of ice in the sea! The aim of the field trip was to continue the project of the Québec lichen flora (spearheaded by Serge Payette and Catherine Boudreault). Dennis had the opportunity to collect the woolly mos Racomitrium lanuginosum for his doctoral project. He will be dissecting th...

This is the first paper of the collaborative grant led by Fay-Wei Li to do a worldwide assessment of the symbiosis between hornworts and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria. What's so new about a vanadium nitrogenase? The nitrogenase with a vanadium co-factor had only been  reported from free-living bacteria and cyanobacteria associated to boreal lichens. This "alternative" nitrogenase  is thought to be more active at low temperatures (below 14C) and it plays a crucial role in the nitrogen cycl...