Panama dice no a la minería- triunfo para los ambientalistas

El año 2023 fue un año transcendental para los panameños. Con gran preocupación por la falta de un plan detallado a largo plazo por parte de las autoridades locales, nosotros escribimos una nota al editor de la revista Nature. Nuestra nota hace eco sobre la nota escrita por el colega Iván Landires (y colaboradores) en la revista Science    Le traducimos nuestra nota en Nature: "Panamá se encuentra en una encrucijada de conservación de la biodiversidad y desarrollo económico. El...
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The most comprehensive bryophyte phylogeny to date

Hot off the press ! We have just published the most comprehensive phylogenomic study of bryophytes. An effort born out the collaboration between the leaders of the goflag project and several North American, Latin American, European and Australian institutions. The goflag project is spearheaded by Gordon Burleigh, Stuart McDaniel, Christine Davis (U. of Florida), and Emily Sessa (New York Botanical Garden) and they developed a large number of loci (over 400) for all flagellate land plants ...
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Loss of a giant

We lost the director of our Institute, Louis Bernatchez. Since my arrival to the IBIS in 2016, Louis showed extraordinary support.  He was also the best example of leadership I have seen so far. His intellectual contribution to science is astronomical and his passion and support for his students and staff are legendary.  We are all saddened by the loss of a giant. JC, September 29, 2023
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The diazotrophic bacteria have an impact on the nitrogen budget in the Canadian tundra.

Exciting news about our research regarding moss-symbiosis. Moss-bacterial communities have a core microbiome and bacteria recruited from environmental sources, and symbiotic N2-fixing bacteria contribute to the N budget in northern ecosystems through biological nitrogen fixation. This process may be affected by the abundance of diazotrophs and moss nutrient content. As part of his thesis research, Dennis Escolástico and collaborators (Jean-Philippe Bellenger, Charlotte Blasi, Nicolas De...
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Lichens du Québec

Nous avons des nouvelles de notre équipe de travail. Marta et Annie St-Louis ont fait un jour de vulgarisation sur les lichens à la Maison Léon Provancher. En plus, Philip vient de publier (voir pdf) des lichens del'Archipel-de-Mingan.  Philip a fait un entrevue sur la diversité et l'importance des lichens de la Côte-Nord. Bravo !! ------------ We have news from our lab. Marta and Annie St-Louis shared her passion and knowledge of lichens with the public at La Maison Léon Provanc...
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Fieldwork and news from the lab

This month we did fieldwork in the Parc des Grands Jardins and collected reindeer lichens (Cladonia stellaris) for whole genome sequencing. We got also great news, Lilisbeth del Carmen Rodríguez-Castro obtained a prestigious ELAP fellowship to visit the lab from August 2023-February 2024.  Lilisbeth will be working on the metagenomic assembly of bacterial epiphytes associated to the canopy gymnosperm, Zamia pseudoparasitica. Bravo Lilisbeth ! Finally, Adriel M. Sierra Pinilla was a...
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Fieldwork in Panama

During our "lecture week" or a winter break, we have a time off from the strike.  In that week, we headed to Panama to do some fieldwork. One of the young undergraduates in our lab, Mia Roy, went to assist Lilisbeth in her fieldwork. Lilisbeth is doing fantastic work on the phyllosphere microbiota of the only epiphytic gymnosperm, Zamia pseudoparasitica. In the field, we continued the census of one of the Panamanian endemics Zamia nana. We saw no snakes this time!!, and collected multiple mal...
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Lilisbeth was awarded a STRI short-term fellowship to study Zamia pseudoparasitica

We just got the news that Lilisbeth Rodríguez-Castro, was awarded a STRI short-term fellowship . These are highly competitive and prestigious fellowships to foster research on tropical settings, especially Panama. Lilisbeth will continue her fascinating work on the only epiphytic gymnosperm, Zamia pseudoparasitica. Her work is part of her master's thesis in the Program of Environmental Microbiology at the Universidad de Panamá.  She's looking into the functional genomics of the p...
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